Tagged: poem

Sneachta – Snow

Sneachta

le Máire Nic a’Daird

Nach deas í an tuath
lena cota bog ban
ina codladh go sáimh
sa sneachta geal glan.

Snow

by Máire Nic a’Daird

How lovely is the world
with its soft white coat,
sleeping snugly
in the bright, clean snow.

It’s not the first snow of the season–we had an icy shot across the bow a couple weeks ago that left a sleety, slushy mess on the roads for a few days–but this morning’s dusting has a nicer feel to it. The weather forecast calls for cold and colder temperatures, so perhaps this dusting will stick around for a while. I need to get the studded tires on my bicycle this weekend.

“Sneachta” by Máire Nic a’Daird was the first Irish poem I learned. It was in an early Irish lesson in the basement of the Irish Well, with the late and much-missed Sean T. Kelley, and I think it was meant to demonstrate that modifiers come after the noun in Irish–”cota bog ban” is “coat soft white,” “sneachta geal glan” is “snow bright clean”. But I remembered it because it has some lovely sounds packed into a little space: those “s” sounds and “b” sounds, all the broad vowels (“a”, “o”, “u” are broad in Irish, “i” and “e” are slender, with much import all around–Irish orthography is too big a topic to tackle this morning). It sounds like a quiet, softly-dusted winter morning to me.

Faoileán – Seagull

According to my site stats, I pretty regularly get visitors here looking for a translation of this poem. I’m not sure if it’s a testament to the popularity of this poem, certainly Michael Davitt‘s best-known, or to the fact that it’s part of the curriculum in Irish language classes. I tend to suspect the latter is a big part of it: the searches tend to cluster around the beginning of the school year, and originate mostly from Dublin and its suburbs.

So in the interest of both helping out some scoláirí and giving Michael Davitt a wider (though not much) audience in the English-speaking world, here’s my rendering of “Faoileán”:

Faoileán

le Michael Davitt

Thíos ar an trá,
Is an mhaidin ag pléascadh sa chuan,
Braithim an bás,
An púca im thimpeall go buan.

Féach an faoileán uaibhreach,
Mar bhrúscar ar charraig dhudh,
Cloisim amhrán uaigneach,
I saoirse na farraige.

Bhíodh sé ar snámh,
Go hard os cionn tonntracha bán’
Leath a sciatháin
Ó Bheanntraí go Dún na nGall.

Ach tháinig an bád ola seo,
Trasna na farraige,
Is lion sé an cuan gleoite seo,
Le fual lucht an airgid.

Féach an faoileán uaibhreach,
Mar bhrúscar ar charraig dhubh
Cloisim amhrán uaigneach,
I saoirse na farraige.

Seagull

by Michael Davitt

Down the beach,
with morning exploding in the harbor,
I feel death,
that constant hobgoblin companion.

I see the proud seagull,
wrecked on a black rock,
I hear its lonely song,
the freedom of the seas.

It was swimming,
high on the white waves’ crown,
spreading its wings
from Bantry to Donegal.

But then came the oil tanker,
across the seas,
and caught the tidy bay,
and pissed out its moneyed cargo.

I see the proud seagull,
wrecked on a black rock,
I hear its lonely song,
the freedom of the seas.

The Conservation of Memory #poem

The universe stuffs each in its unruly attic,
ready to dole out in some other form
like a grandmother’s wigs for Mardi Gras.

The Conservation of Memory by Bethany Reid

The Valetudinarian


They don’t give you a manual, Meredith, and who’s going to prepare you if not your grandpa? I’m not going to to pussyfooting around your bowel movements on account of your innocence, because one day you’re going to wake up and wonder why the world perpetrated treacherous lies against such a perfect creature as yourself…

The Valetudinarian by Joshua Ferris, August 3 2009

Joshua Ferris’ story of a widower adrift in a Florida retirement community, plagued by a wide range of physical ailments, annoying neighbors, and distant children, is both a hilarious character sketch and comedic romp, and an example of Tolkein’s eucatastrophe. Knocked out of his rut by a Russian prostitute and a Viagra-induced heart attack, Arty Groys is set on a course that may be for the better, or may be for the worst, but is certainly more interesting than morosely ordering pizza from his lonely apartment.

This was also the pick of The New Yorkerest; great taste, as per usual.

(A “valetudinarian,” incidentally, is “a person who is excessively concerned about his or her poor health or ailments.” “[F]rom valetudo “state of health,” from valere “be strong” (see valiant) ” I like this little play on words, since the valetudinous Arty does indeed exhibit some valiant tendencies at the end.)

I’d also like to give a little shout out to the Rae Armantrout poem, Money Talks; she packs a lot into a little, as always, turning a billboard into a wry economic commentary.

Dún – Stronghold

Dún

le Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Id ghéaga daingne
ní bhfaighfidh mé bás choiche
ní thiocfaidh orm aon sceimhle,
ní líonfaidh orm anbhá.
Ní chloisfidh mé
ag gíoscán ins an oíche
fearsad na cairte fuafaire
a ghluaiseann trí pháirc an áir.

Is dún nó daingean iad
do ghéaga i mo thimpeall
do ghuailne leathana
am chosaint ar a lán.
Ag cuardach fothaine dom
ó gharbhshíon na cinniúna
tá gairdín foscaidh le fáilt
idir do dhá shlinneán.

Is sa ghairdín sin
tá beacha is ológa
ta mil ar luachair ann
is na crainn go léir faoi bhláth
i dtús an fhomhair
mar ní thagann aon gheimhridh
is gaoth an tseaca
ní luíonn air anáil.

Is lasmuigh dínn
tá críocha is ciníocha
ag bruíon is ag bunú sibhialtachta
ag puililiú ar an gclár.
Dá mbeadh ceithre creasa
na cruinne in aon chaor lasrach
dá n-imeodih an cosmos
in aon mheall craorag amháin.

Ba chuma liom, do ghéaga
a bheith im thimpeall
níorbh ann do scáth nó eagla
níorbh ann don ocras riamh.
Nuair a fhilleann tú mé
go cneasta isteach id bhaclainn
táim chomh slán sábháilte
leis an gcathair ard úd ar shliabh.

Coinnigh go daingean mé
laistigh den gciorcal draíochta
le teas do cholainne
le teasargan do chabhaile.
Do chneas lem chneas
do bhéal go dlúth lem béalaibh
ní chluinfead na madraí allta
ag uallfairt ar an má.

Ach níl in aon ní ach seal:
i gcionn leathuaire
pógfaidhh tú mé ar bharr m’éadain
is casfaidh tú orm do dhrom
is fágfar mé ar mo thaobh féin
don leaba dhúbailte
ag cuimhneamh faoi scáth do ghuailne
ná tiocfaidh orm bás riamh roimh am.

Stronghold

by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

In your arms’ fortress
I will face neither eternal death
nor terror,
panic will not fill me.
I will not hear
the grinding in the night
of the war carriages’ axles
rolling through the battlefields.

You arms are a fortress
around me,
your broad shoulders
completely protecting me.
I seek my shelter
from fate’s storm
in the shaded garden ring
between your shoulder blades.

And in that garden
are bees and olives
with honey on the rushes there,
the trees in full bloom
even at the start of Autumn;
winter never comes there,
the frosty winds
never blow there.

Beyond the fortress
walls are people
struggling and building civilizations,
a mad hullabaloo.
If the four corners of the globe
were one flaming berry
if the cosmos were rolled
into one crimson ball

It wouldn’t matter to me, your limbs
still around me;
no room for shadow or fear,
no room there for hunger.
When you fold me
gently inside the bend of your arm
I am safer than
the city high on a mountain.

The fortress keeps me
within the magic circle
with the body’s heat
with the body’s deliverance
skin on skin
mouth on mouth
I will not hear the wild beasts
howling on the plain.

But nothing outlasts its time:
in a half an hour
you will kiss the top of my forehead
and turn from me on your back
in the double bed
and I will think about your shoulders’ shadow
and not that death is always approaching me.

Last month, a reader wrote to request some help with this poem; they were dissatisfied with the translation by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, which appears in Pharaoh's Daughter, and had some questions about a few of the trickier lines.

I’ve noted before that I consider Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill far beyond my translation skills, in either Irish or English, but I decided to give it a shot. I don’t think my translation is as good as Ní Chuilleanáin’s (an accomplished poet in her own right; here’s an example); it’s a bit more literal, though, which is what I think my reader was looking for in the kinds of questions in the e-mail.

Any translation is an interpretation; some things are harder to write in English than in Irish, and vice versa, and some things that make perfect sense in one language are pure nonsense in another. Ní Chuilleanáin’s translation of this poem is certainly more interpretive than mine, and takes some liberties that I, surely far less familiar than Ní Chuilleanáin with Irish idiom, dare not take.

This poem is a good companion piece to the other Ní Dhomhnaill poem, “Oileán”, that I’ve tried to translate. Like “Oileán,” “Dún” is a sensuous poem, but the sensuousness is undercut by some of its recurring images. “Oileán” posits love in the midst of loneliness; “Dún” places love in a bleak landscape of destruction. Safety, protection, and certainty are contrasted with images of war and tumult and wild beasts; but at the same time, the safety is represented by a fortress, a martial image that echoes the war carriages and battlefield of the first stanza.

My favorite word in this poem is “puililiú”; my dictionary sent me to “fuilibiliú”, which gave me “hullabaloo; halloo, yell.” Ní Chuilleanáin doesn’t translate this line directly–she gives “multiplying on the globe” for what the people beyond the stronghold’s charmed circle are up to–but I simply had to use it, even if it clashes a bit with the rest of the poem.

I also love the internal echoes of “le teas do cholainne / le teasargan do chabhaile.” I can’t render it very well in English. “Teas” is “heat”; “teasargan” is “deliverance” or “rescue”. Both “colainn” and “cabhail” are words for “body”; I’m sure there are subtle distinctions between them of which I’m not aware, and that further enhance that lovely balance between “teas” and “teasargan.”

“Dún” should probably be translated as “Fortress”–it appears in many Irish place names associated with ancient forts–but I like the title Ní Chuilleanáin chose because it echoes the holding arms and strong back that are the poem’s central images.

35 Across

To everyone who’s landed here today from a variety of search engines looking for “Sailor’s destination in a Yeats poem”: the answer is “Byzantium.”

Great poem, Sailing to Byzantium.

(That’s 35 across, in the November 29, 2009, Los Angeles Times Crossword.)

How did we ever solve crosswords without the Internet?

not a shiny dime floating in a cold blue

We pull off
to a road shack
in Massachusetts
to watch men walk

on the moon.

A final space poem (for now), this one by Elizabeth Alexander, the poet who read at Obama’s first inauguration.

This poem juxtaposes the strangeness of the astronauts on the moon with the strangeness of a black family at a rural New England roadside stand, and contrasts the incredible progress of the moon mission with the halting, shuffling progress of our society’s attitudes. And the poem suggests, at least in my optimistic reading, that more strange sights like “bounces in space- / boots, tethered / to cords” cannot be a bad thing for us.

Today too somewhere a tiny light

We children of the stars children of space
born in the oceans and matured on land
have the history of the universe its hundreds of billions of years
etched on our bodies
Look! Today too somewhere a tiny light

Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki has also contributed to the Space Chain Poem, a project sponsored by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Contributors have included astronauts, scientists, and poets.

How strong is my affection for that ancient home of ours

Afloat in the darkness before my eyes, the watery planet bluely glows
How strong is my affection for that ancient home of ours,
how deep my gratitude for the gift of life
Tomorrow, I will dare the blue sky and open up worlds unknown
for there we have our dreams

Wakata Koichi, the Japanese astronaut, is an actual poet in space: he contributed to the Space Poem Chain, a project that pulls together the efforts of poets and ordinary people from around the world. Koichi composed his contribution while aboard the International Space Station in March 2009.

My friends, my suited up pilgrims

One side of our house was desert
And the other, the one facing east,
Was Eden itself.
I didn’t know this until I bounced on a trampoline
And landed on the garage roof, me the unpaid astronaut,
Age nine, knees scuffed from a rough landing.

On the theme of poets in space, here’s a wonderful poem by Gary Soto, “The Boy’s First Flight,” commissioned by NASA. Soto pairs a boy’s roof-top adventure beneath “the bushel of stars, / Pitched and pulsating their icy thorns” with the space shuttle’s launch (“what lever does the commander push / To make a smile on his face, her face?”). This poem captures the giddy joy of flight, and the fearless optimism behind the moon shot.

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