Category: Translations

Cloisim – I Heard

I’ve had several visitors (well, about 10, but for me that’s a lot) who’ve been drawn here searching for the Irish poet Michael Davitt. I’m not sure why there’s a sudden increase in interest in a modern Irish poet, but since there seems to be an audience for him I might as well take advantage of the spike. From now until St. Patrick’s Day (and perhaps beyond if I have the momentum and my Foclóir Gaelge-Béarla holds up), I’ll try to offer a translation a day.

So here’s Davitt’s “Cloisim” from the collection “Gleann ar Ghleann,” first in the original Irish and then in my clumsy translation.

Cloisim

le Michael Davitt

Cloisim go bhfuil tú
ar thóir na gréine
a bhuachaill (ionam)

ach líonfaidh taoide fós
is fliuchfar an óige ionat
ach ná fliuchtar an ghrian

ionat (mar chaillfeá cuimhne
ar laethanta ar thrá
ag teitheadh ón taoide

a bhí róghlic duit uaireanta)
lasadh sí go geal
dod threorú. Is nuair

a thiocfaidh scamaill dhubha
buail fút go foighneach
sa dorchacht

mar imíonn a ghruaim
leo
de ghnáth.

I Heard

by Michael Davitt

I heard you
chasing the sun
my boy (in me)

but the high tide at last
drowns the youth in you
but doesn’t drown the sun

in you (like forgetting
on days at the beach
to flee the tide

you were too clever by half)
its bright flame
guided you. It’s a pity

the black clouds came
striking dispassionately against
their darkness

leaving behind the gloom
as they
always will.

Listening Room, Volume 2

Some more podcasts that have piqued my interest recently:

Lorrie Moore on Donald Barthelme

From the New York Review of Books, one of my favorite living short story writers talks about one of my favorite dead short story writers. The discussion begins with a reflection on the near-simultaneous passing of Raymond Carver (August 2, 1988) and Donald Barthelme (July 23, 1989), who together bookended the modern American short story. It’s hard to imagine two less similar writers–one a grim naturalist, the other a playfully anarchic surrealist–but their influence can be seen still in the American short story, not least in Moore’s own work. A new biography of Barthelme, Hiding Man by Tracy Daugherty, is available from St. Martin’s Press.

Campaign in Verse: Calvin Trillin on MPR Midmorning

Kerri Miller interviews Calvin Trillin, The Nation’s “deadline poet” and New Yorker essayist, about his new book of doggerel, Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme. Trillin is, as ever, witty and charming. If you’re already a member of your local public radio station, go ahead and skip the pledge plea in the middle; if you’re not, then let the guilt sink in and help support this kind of radio.

In Our Time: The Waste Land and Modernity

“In Our Time” probably isn’t to everyone’s taste: a bunch of tweedy academics chat with host Melvyn Bragg about the obscure minutiae of literature, history, physics, and philosophy. I like the way Bragg prods his professors along, getting them to stay on topic and hit the key points he’s decided they need to discuss, and the way the professors balk along their naturally elliptical courses. This discussion of T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land is a good example of the genre. I was especially intrigued to discover that the footnotes in “The Waste Land” (might this have been the first poem written with a scholarly apparatus provided by the poet himself?) were an afterthought, added to pad out the first edition from Boni and Liveright.

Miette’s Bedtime Story Podcast: Various Miracles

Still on Canadian Fiction Month, Miette offers Carol Shields’ “Various Miracles,” a series of coincidences that starts off subtly enough and then grows increasingly strange, unlikely, and elliptical. This is a delightful introduction to Shields, best known in the U.S. for The Stone Diaries but equally a master of the short story; see her Collected Stories for ample proof.

Downtime: The Sacred Art of Stopping

Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith and Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, talks about the importance and difficulty of hearing our own thoughts in an increasingly loud, busy, and connected world. If this speech doesn’t inspire you to turn off the phone, computer, television, and iPod, and spend a few minutes looking at the grass or the stars or into your own head and heart, then it’s probably too late anyway.

Boise Philharmonic: Courage and Hope

The Boise (Idaho) Philharmonic has begun releasing full concert recordings as podcasts. They’re all enjoyable, but I was especially struck by the third concert, “Courage and Hope,” which pairs Gustav Mahler’s 5th symphony with Shulamit Ran’s “Vessels of Hope and Courage.” The pairing works well: Mahler’s long symphony starts with a dark and roiling chaos that finally opens up into a triumphal exultation; and Ran’s work, inspired by the 1947 “Exodus” voyage of European Jewish refugees to Palestine, is characterized by a defiant hopefulness tinged with darkness. This is an interesting experiment that I hope other regional orchestras pursue; the podcasts fulfill the mission of bringing music to the public, while also serving as advertising for the organization. If you enjoy this sort of podcast, consider making a domation to the Boise Philharmonic, and encourage your own local orchestra to pursue a similar campaign.

Gaoth Chun Dé – A Wind from God

A Wind from God

by Michael Davitt

It is
an ill wind
indeed
that brings
rain
out of the west
as I watch
my old cap
fly into the air
over
God’s chapel.

Gaoth Chun Dé

le Michael Davitt

Níorbh aon
drochghaoth
í siúd
a thug
an bháisteach
léi aniar
mar chonaic
Seáinín caipín
san aer
os cionn
séipéal Dé.

This was a tough one; I’m sure I got it entirely wrong. It’s almost haiku-like in its simplicity and compression, and I had to make some guesses for things (like “drochghaoth,” which I’ve rendered “ill wind”) not covered in my Foclóir Póca.

Aisling ag Casadh na Gráige: Vision at the Turning of the Road

An attempt at translation …

Vision at the Turning of the Road (Casadh na Gráige)

by Michael Davitt

I sketched
With a quick pen this morning
A picture:
Rocky shore, heath, road –
It’s an eerie place, Casadh na Gráige.

The picture rises up before me …
I hear the thin cries of women
On the north wind,
I see the lonely grave of the sea,
The dark woman, her skeletal hands,
Keening toward the sky …
I fall down on my knees, devoutly.
Prayers glide from me
And I see the graven words on a slab:

THE DEAD MAN
A life lost at last
in the heart of the people

I rise …
And turn back
In pursuit of the picture.

Aisling ag Casadh na Gráige

le Michael Davitt

Breacaim sios im intinn
Le peann luath na maidne seo
Pictiúr:
Carraigeacha, fraoch, bóthar–
Áit uaigneach é Casadh na Gráige.

Imíonn an pictiúr soir uaim …
Cloisim scread chaol mnrá
Aduaidh ar an ngaoth,
Chím uaigh aonair sa bhfarraige
Is bean dubh, laacute;mha síe,
Ag caoineadh chun na spéire …
Ansan bhíos léi ar mo ghlúine, seasmhach.
Shleamhnaigh paidir uaim
Is chonac os mo chomhair scríofa ar leac:

AN FEAR MARBH
Saol marbh a mhaireann fós
I gcroí na ndaoine

Dúisím …
Imím liom soir
Ar thóir an phictiúir.

About fifteen years ago, when I first moved to Minneapolis, I studied Irish with Sean T. Kelly in the basement of the Irish Well (where there’s now a big Menard’s lumberyard). I had tried to teach myself Irish once before, when I lived in London, and discovered that it’s a language that really requires a teacher.

I got about as good at it as you’d expect from weekly lessons under an Irish bar; I was able to read a little Flann O’Brien and Sean O’Faolain, sing along with Clannad and Capercaille, and hold my own in discussions of weather and drinking. But work and marriage and kids and all that sort of stuff took precedence over keeping up with an obscure language (even if it is, as Patrick O’Brian would have it, the native tongue of God and His angels).

While cleaning out some books in the basement recently, I ran across “Gleann ar Ghleann” (“From Glen to Glen”) by Michael Davitt, a modern Irish poet (born 1950, died 2005). I remember buying it at The Hungry Mind, with high hopes of using it in my Irish education, but I never got around to it.

So here, for what little it’s worth, is my first shot at translating this slim volume of verse. Surely there are better translations of Davitt available (I’ve also got some Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill committed to memory, but I don’t think I dare go head-to-head with Seamus Heaney); but I offer this up in the spirit of challenge to students of Irish and poetry: do better than I did, and I’ll sing your praises (and give you links and whatnot).

Translating poetry isn’t easy–a literal transcription just won’t do–and a language as idiomatic and slippery as Irish requires an especially nimble mind and tongue. I’m in awe of people (like Heaney) who do it well, and spending a little time with a poem in another language makes me very conscious of the nuances that my Sasanach brain will never comprehend.

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