> Hello Matt,
             Thanks for your comments on this one. Yes, there are two many `the´s and at least one is for the chop. It´s amazing how one can miss things like that. I also notice a typo in the last line where `a´ before `luscious fruit´ should not be there. However, to answer your query about the German. A direct translation of the line is `He lived like a real artist´. A more idiomatic rendering might be `He lived the life of a true artist. I was a bit dubious of using German as it could just seem pretentious. I wanted the ference to Brahms because of his lifestyle but it could have been made in English. I decided to go ahead with the German, though, because of the title. `Gift´ in German means `poison´ and I really wanted to release that meaning because the poem is partly about living in the imagination rather than the real world and masturbation. I felt that the German meaning and the two English meanings `a present´, `a talent´ combined to give the poem greater depth, especially in view of the etymological confusion between poison and medicine in various languages e.g. drugs in English. It is, of course, possible that I am alone in feeling this ;-)




Best wishes,    Mike



> From: "Merritt, Matt - Leic. Mercury"              <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 2003/10/31 Fri AM 11:05:59 EET
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: New sub: Gift
> 
> Hi Mike,
> I can't add anything much to what others have written. I agree that there's
> too many uses of "the" in "or lie in the dew-soaked grass in the shade below
> the trunks", but otherwise I really like it. It's restrained enough to
> sidestep any sentimentality, so I think it works really well. Can you
> satisfy my curiosity, though? I was terrible at German at school, so haven't
> translated the phrase properly, and worry I might be missing something
> important. Can you help?
> Matt 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Horwood [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
> Sent: 30 October 2003 12:55
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: New sub: Gift
> 
> 
> THIS EMAIL HAS BEEN SWEPT FOR VIRUSES BY THE NORTHCLIFFE GROUP MAILSWEEPER
> SERVER.
> 
> here´s one that I sent two or three weeks ago and which seems to have
> dropped into a black hole in cyberspace called Lost Mail.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gift
> 
> These things can look after themselves.
> The early summer apples hang tight
> and hard, or lie in the dew-soaked
> grass in the shade below the trunks.
> 
> I look far beyond them to where
> a night-dark sea rises and falls
> with a compelling rhythm.
> The same rhythm that under-
> 
> pins Brahms´ fourth symphony.
> `Er lebte wie ein richtiger Künstler,´
> you told me once. I see you, too.
> The sky is as black as your hair.
> 
> The blind casts moonlight stripes
> across my back in the same way
> that the wind carries night scents.
> These things need me to look after them.
> 
> You move under a palm. Your silhouette
> crosses the moon-path on the water.
> You bring me this vivid bloom,
> this gift of a luscious fruit with a waxy rind.
> 
> 
> 
> Mike
>