First Snow

There's something sweet set in the early snow

Before the slush can burden every street

With ground unfrozen and unhurried feet

I watch the snowflakes flutter to and fro

While I with no important place to go

And yet no reason either to retreat

Wander myself more widely still to meet

More snowflakes in the street lights starting glow.

I know of course that I will soon regret

That I live where it snows all winter long

And that the feet that I have quickly set

Out wandering will soon wish they'd belong

To someone sensible and warm. And yet

I cannot think my first response was wrong.

cringe

It's hard to write a love song that's OK;

So many problematic lyrics lie

Lurking to slip in along the way

And turn it creepy. Ask the reason why

Your love is not returned, and you risk seeming

As if you felt entitled to their feeling;

Express your depth and density of dreaming

And see yourself project on them; appealing

To all you've done for them implies a debt

Which is not how love works, or ought to work;

And goodness help you if you've barely met

You're just obsessed, and that makes you a jerk.

Love is a risk, and part of that's the chance

You'll fall to cringe when you attempt romance.

eh

I have no energy for anything

Not for my food, my body, or my feet.

I barely feel the motion of my seat

As I away back and forth. I cannot sing.

I lack even the anger I would bring

To feeling sick. I only feel defeat.

I have no strength to rouse myself or greet

The day. I'm strung up in a string

Of my own emptiness. It numbs the pain

So that I barely register it anymore,

But do not truly feel any relief.

I want to sleep. My eyelids will not wane

Which makes me almost wonder what they're for

But wondering is work beyond belief.

Rain, Fair

There's some divine displeasure in the day

That drips down raindrops on the milling crowd,

Turns calm white clouds into a whirling gray

(As if the summer's sky were disallowed),

Spills sodden seeds down onto city streets

That were not well-designed to take the load,

And when all this is done, simply repeats

Washing along all those who dared the road.

God does not dice with us; we are not players

But pieces moved around the board at need.

There is no hope for answer to our prayers:

Our wills are ours, but divine will is freed

To soak the city down at divine pleasure

Regardless of our hopeful plans for leisure.

Further on Translation

I have been working and reworking on some translations from Lope de Vega's "Rimas", and it has made me think about the nature of translating something like a sonnet in slightly more structured terms than I have previously; or possibly just in slightly different terms than I have previously, given the previous posts on this blog about this topic.

In short, I want to suggest that while there is definitely value in translating formal poetry like a sonnet into a) the most euphonious translation regardless of meter and rhyme in the new language, b) a poetic translation that nevertheless takes liberties with both rhyme and meter in order to once again deliver a more aesthetically pleasing result, or c) an extremely literal translation, I will always plump for d) a sonnet translated as a sonnet.

Now of course some of this is my personal commitment to the sonnet form, with all its ridiculousnesses. But I want to suggest that the meter and rhyme are just as fundamental to the sonnet as the words themselves.

After all as I suggested repeatedly here, a sonnet is not a sonnet without that structure; it is still obviously a poem, if it wants to be, and it can even be a formal poem without the specific metrical and rhythmic and rhyming structures of the 14 line metered rhyming sonnet, but I believe that in responding to the form and participating in the form and being a sonnet there is still distinct value to retaining those formal elements.

As such of course one must accept some degree of alteration to other elements of the poem. The question is which? After all just as I have said that the sonnet has formal elements that should be respected, each poem obviously has all the other elements such as language and specific word choice and theme and metaphor and wordplay etc. Why respect the sonnet form over those?

Well of course the first answer is that as much as possible we should retain all of it. I think translations are at their best when they can participate in multiple layers of what the original was doing, and so keeping the rhyme and meter while also keeping the meaning and the subtext and so on is the ideal. But I am sympathetic to the idea that the poem should and does have some wiggle room. The repositioning of a term; the insertion or deletion of a small phrase that seems to have unity with the rest of the poem, but is either not going to fit into the new language or is required to make up the rhyme or meter; the use of synonyms that do not specifically meet cognates for instance; these and other related techniques that attempt to maintain what the translator feels are the essential core elements of the sonnet while assisting in producing the formal elements of the sonnet are, I think, justified.

Practically, this usually means a very rough translation, followed by an attempt at a smoother more metrical and rhythmic and rhyming translation, followed by an awful lot of tinkering.

But I believe that doing so is helpful to maintain the sonnet-ness of the poem, and to help a new reader in a new language understand that this poem too was participating in that deep tradition.

Mutuals

Forgive me, for I must admit my lack:

I do not have the patience. Not for this.

I'd love if you would only cut me slack

And cover what impatience makes me miss.

Oh, do not blame the phone! It did not force

My fingers to caress it, or my eyes

To dance over its surface. Yes, of course,

I was distracted, but the fault here lies

With me, not my distraction. I cannot

As I should, let my mind be settled here

But must explore my every waking thought

Online. And so I beg of you my dear

Forgive my fault, and try, love, to recall

You do the same too often after all.

John Leslie Breck (Exhibition at Figge)

There are some themes I can identify:

The grainstacks of Giverny, first of all,

Set in the open, backed by bluish sky;

The seasons, though not ever fully fall;

The open river, lined by leaning trees

That yearn to touch the water, but cannot,

Their limbs untouched by even mild breeze,

Their trunks too stable to imagine rot;

Beck in himself, a not-too-humble scene;

A dozen or so snowfalls, white with grey;

Most everything in blues and deeper green

Touched by the tendrils of the dawning day;

Most livelily, another painter's daughters

And drops of sunlight on the endless waters.

#January6thCommitteeHearing

It was a motherfucking coup

I really don't know what to say

If it seemed otherwise to you

Except that you are not okay.

We cannot let this bullshit pass

And still be a democracy;

The GOP showed its whole ass

Again on national TV.

That who was rioting, you know--

The right wing is their party base,

Their primaries this year will show

This stain is there--they can't erase

That they tried hard to break our state

A Grand Old Party, full of hate.

Actual Quarantine

Honestly the strangest part of all

Is how the quarantine feels like the past;

Like March two years ago, when what were small

Case rates seemed large, and we had not amassed

A range of options other than to sit

At home and hope the plague would pass us by.

Now we have more to do to ward off it

But once it hits, there's nothing left to try

Except the same old staying home. And now

We wait. There's nothing but the waiting.

And if there's something else, I don't know how

To find it. I just hate anticipating

The test that tells my future. So I wait

And as I wait, I feel my back teeth grate.

Enchantment

The day has dawned delightfully indeed

The sun is shining in the silver sky

The grass is growing green in seeming greed

To top the turf in splendor, or to try.

The morning mists like magic melt away

To leave the lingering lawn to look its best;

The frosts have fled to foreign lands. The fae

Have winged their way to wander in the west

Nearer to night than morning. Now we near

The start of summer, and the sunshine shows

Queer, quiet things that quaked our quilts with fear

Can comfort us, in kinder, daylight clothes.

And yet, you know, your warm days make me yearn

For frost, and frozen fairies in a fern.

Galactic

The stars are bright during the day.

They do not change depending on our sky.

And if they would, they are so far away

They could not even see our Earth to try.

The Sun, though closer, also does not alter

With our Earth's weak rotations as we turn;

Its massive fusion cannot, will not falter

So even in our night the Sun will burn.

The Moon, I must admit, will never shine;

Its beams can but reflect the Sun's bright light

But sunlight will reflect from it just fine

Even when, to us, it is not night.

The heavens do not wait on our affairs

No more should we on strangers' thoughts or stares.

Travel

I'm sure that life would have a different tone

If I lived here, or close to here, each day

No seeds of sudden Wonder would be sown

I'd curse the sky above for being Gray.

I'd be annoyed, and not excited, to

Slip by a sudden crowd upon the street

And when I had a thousand things to do

The slow bus speed would no longer be neat.

If I had needs that were not being met

I'd be as frustrated as I am now

At home; the bustle would not be, I bet,

Sufficient to not let me have a cow.

But since I am a visitor, I'll squeeze

The joy from what for living is dis-ease.

Dusk

The hours of the day have lingered on

Like Midwest guests unwilling to depart

Until the reason for their going's gone

And all the salutations must restart.

The sky has blazed and faded to a glow

Just barely visible against the dark;

The sun, like us, does not desire to go

And hides itself in the horizon's park.

The moon has risen, but would not be rude

And so will wait until the sun has flown;

Though it is early, it will not intrude--

But once it comes, its glory is its own.

The night that we await will be divine

But day has readied us for something fine.