Tag: translation

Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going —
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.

Hi Friends,

There are many accounts of Zen Buddhist monks who predicted the timing of their own deaths and then faced their passing with absolute calm. In 1360, at the age of seventy-seven, Kozan Ichikyo is said to have written this poem on the morning of his death, laid down his brush, and died sitting upright. Just a few days before, he had called his pupils together, ordered them to bury him without ceremony, and forbade them to hold services in his memory. The pupils obeyed — in part; Ichikyo’s verse remembers him centuries later.

This translation comes from the anthology Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death compiled by Yoel Hoffmann, a professor of Eastern Philosophy and Literature at Tel-Aviv University and Kyoto University.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I am sending out one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, visit www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Best,
Ellen

Correction Note from the next day’s poem-a-day: Dear Friends, First off, I have a correction to the April 5 poem-a-day: It turns out that the current year is 2010, not 2261, and therefore Kozan Ichikyo’s 1360 verse has not been remembered “over 900 years later” — at least not yet. My apologies for the error; I switched monks on you at the last minute and failed to update that figure!

La Guitarra

Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Es inútil
callarla.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora monótona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora por cosas
lejanas.
Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama.
¡Oh guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.

The Guitar

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of the dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
It is useless
to silence it.
It is impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
As water weeps,
As wind weeps
over snowfields.
It is impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for things
far away.
Sand of the hot South
that begs for white camellias.
It weeps, arrow without a target,
Evening without a morning,
And the first bird dead
On the branch.
Oh, guitar!
A heart stabbed to death
by five swords.

Hello Friends,

This English version of Federico García Lorca‘s “La Guitarra,” from his collection El poema del cante jondo (1921), combines pieces of translations by Cola Franzen, Curt Hopkins, and Harper’s Magazine (July 2008). This poem can also be found in the 2007 bilingual edition of Lorca’s Selected Poems.

“La Guitarra” begs to be set to flamenco guitar, and several musicians over the years have answered that cry — here’s one interpretation by Cuban singer-songwriter Vicente Feliu, performing in Buenos Aires in September 2007.

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

He watched me, still as a stone,
Speaking no more than an animal,
And I thought perhaps he had
No brain to speak with, nor a tongue.
So I got up my courage and I said:
     “You, tell me, what are you,
Good, or evil, or what?”
     And he answered: “I am a man.”
“What kind of man?” “The kind
You see. I’m nothing but myself.”
“And what are you doing?” “I’m here,
Guarding this herd near this wood.”
“Guarding them? By Saint Peter in Rome!
No one commands these beasts.
And how could you guard such savage
Creatures in an open field
Or a wood or anywhere else
If they’re neither tied nor shut in?”
“I guard them so carefully, and so well,
That they’d never leave this place.”
“Ridiculous! Tell me the truth!”
“Not one of them would move an inch
If he saw me coming …
But no one else could do this,
Just me. Anyone approaching
That herd would be killed at once.
And so I am the lord of my animals.”

***

When the storm had completely vanished
I saw so many birds
In that pine tree (could anyone believe me?)
That it looked as if every branch,
Every twig, was hidden by birds.
And the tree was even lovelier,
For the birds all sang at once,
In marvelous harmony, though each
Was singing its proper song
And not a note that belonged
To one was sung by another.
And I gloried in their happiness,
Listening as they sang their service
Through, unhurried: I’d never
Heard joy so complete,
And no one else will hear it,
I think, unless he goes there
And can hear what filled me with joy
And rapture so deep that I was carried
Away—

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s poem-a-day is a sampling from the first two sections of Yvain: The Knight of the Lion by the twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, as translated by the twentieth-century poet and professor Burton Raffel. The original is in Old French, octosyllabic rhyming couplets, and 6,818 lines long.

Enjoy.
Ellen