Thanks Rebecca. I always appreciate compliments from a real translator,
however handicapped they may be by not knowing my original. I'm attempting
to cobble together what's becoming a tortuous response on Trilce III, so
this was a distraction.
Yes, I can see the syntax runs awry towards the end, but I've chosen
asyntactic (or marginally syntactic) compression over the sentimentality
that seems to dog any more perspicuous version. But you got it: it's the
"true company" which would "cancel want" or, alternatively, this cancelling
is what's desired.
Here's a couple from earlier in the sequence:
1
In the small hours
far too highstrung,
make the zither
twang.
Gauze curtains catch
the moon,
wind chills
the skin.
Hear, in the far marsh,
one wild goose call;
throngs swoop and sing
up north in woods.
Pacing, pacing,
sight itself shuts down;
misery shrinks
the isolate heart.
3
Under orchard
peach and plum
stray trampled paths,
but when wind burns sere
the leaf
the fall sets in.
Bright flowers fade,
the thorn
walks in the hall.
So saddle up and ride
into the everlasting
high sierras.
Your own time short, what form
should love
of wife and children take
when all across the level lands the grass
stands white,
cold darkens in?
----------
>From: Rebecca Seiferle <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: another working
>Date: Fri, Apr 18, 2003, 10:08 pm
>
> This is very poetic, Trevor, and I like it, especially that opening in the
> summer/furnace. I don't know how to read it syntactically in the last
> stanza. Is a comma missing? I'm not sure how the "could cancel/want"
> follows from the preceding "grief knowing no friends can yet desire true
> company." or is it "true company could cancel want?" Well, you see what I
> mean, I'm sure. Thanks,
>
> Rebecca
>
> Rebecca Seiferle
> www.thedrunkenboat.com
> -------Original Message-------
> From: Trevor Joyce <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 04/18/03 08:05 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: another working
>
>>
>> Attempting to balance the cantankerous with the 'poetic', here's something
> just done. From a sequence usually titled something like "Songs of my
> Heart", which I've perverted to "Outrage" . . .
>
> Trevor
>
> ***
>
>>From Ruan Ji, (210-263 CE)
>
> 7
>
> A month
> to go
> inside this summer
> furnace:
>
> young leaves wilt,
> sweet resins sweat;
> the cool clouds stream
> across the sky.
>
> Seasons no sooner
> in than gone,
> moon and the hunting sun
> run on.
>
> Pacing, pacing
> desolate halls,
> grief knowing
> no friends
>
> can yet desire
> true company
> could cancel
> want.
>>
>
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