Anyway, Dave, I concur fully with Doug & would add that this is a much
more mysterious & demanding poem (in English, independently of its
status as translation) than the Betjeman, the attitudinizing of which is
only vaguely amusing now (I do think he wrote better things) - though
it's interesting that he reserves his intensest aggression for the
double-chinned boss figure.
Best
Martin
Douglas Barbour wrote:
> This reads as if right there in the english, Dave. No feel of the
> 'translatese'...
>
> Doug
> On 23-Apr-06, at 10:32 AM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
>
>> From the Spanish
>>
>> Oppression of a huge tree felled.
>> Black eyebrows knit, as if to stitch
>> together thought. Face with the fine
>> curved line a bird's flight pencils in
>> the sky. Nose like a falcon's beak.
>> Feathery, white hair. Leaf-stripped tree
>> gripped in ice. A razoring glint
>> of water welled in a part-closed
>> stagnant eye. I swat at the flies
>> with a loose linen cloth. Across
>> the sheer face of a corpse a vague
>> shadow slips: a condor's.
>> Also in flight.
>>
>> (1974, rev 2006. Based on the Spanish of Ruben Dario)
>>
>> I came across the 'original' of this yesterday - I thought I'd lost
>> all the
>> early poems I'd written. I did feel though this had possibilities, I
>> heavily
>> revised it, but here we are, me coming on 51 via 19 via Latin America
>> late
>> ninetenth century.
>>
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
> Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>
> Is that the flesh made word
> or is that the flesh-made word?
>
> Fred Wah
>
--
Comme les masques sont les signes qu'il y a des visages, les mots sont les signes - qu'il y a des choses. Et ces choses sont les signes de l'incompréhensible. - Marcel Schwob
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