Translations

An Experience by Hugo Von Hofmannsthal, translated by Mary Kinzie

Half-light filled the valley with a mist Of aromatic silver as when moonlight Seeps through the clouds. And yet it was not night. Grey glimmering, the fragrance of the glen Dissolved into itself what I half thought And quietly I sank into transparent Rocking oceans and gave up my life. What extraordinary flowers were there, With throats that darkly glowed, also thickets Into which a ruddy topaz fire Like lava coursed and smoldered. Everything Was filled with deep harmonic swells Of melancholy music. And I knew (Although I don't yet understand it) --knew That this was death, transformed as music Craving; rough; and sweet and bright and dark, Akin to deepest sadness.

                   But how strange!

A nameless yearning wept for life Without a sound within my soul, weeping As one might when, on an ocean vessel With massive yellow sails against the waves Of Persian blue toward evening, he is borne Along the city that was home. He sees there Lanes, hears lapping springs, smells Perfume from the lilacs, sees himself, A child upon the bank with a child's eyes, Anxious and about to cry; and then sees Through the open window a light on in his room -- But the great ship conveys him out to sea On dark blue water, gliding soundlessly With massive yellow otherworldly sails.

translated by conor

Half-sleep filled my mouth with a taste of phosphorescence as from magnesium streaking through the sky. But there was no light. Black fabric, the halves of my lungs slipped past each other and I spoke in half-song when I rose through the quivering wax-paper ceiling to wake as my ghost. I found such exceptional people With tongues of smoldering coal, also lips From which a white light glowed Like the corona of an eclipse. Each moment Was held by the tiny crests Of passing thoughts. And I remembered (having never experienced) --remembered That this was death, transformed as music, Craving; rough; and sweet and bright and dark, Akin to deepest sadness.

The heart's crimson bird flies through the night by Hildegard Jone

The heart's crimson bird flies through the night. The eye's butterflies, that flutter in the brightness, dart ahead of it to and fro in the daylight. And yet it is the bird that brought them to their goal. They often rest, they who soon rise to new flight. But finally it halts, weary and heavy-winged, at death's branch; then they must look their last and quiver.

translated by conor

A throat's silver tail sleeps through the alarm. The mind's fish, limp in the stillness, sinks below, here or there in the darkness. But now a current licks the sea-grass. They often die, those who are reborn with new scales. And at last a start, alive and unburdened, at birth's eyelid; looking forward to new deaths.

Many-Tiered Man by Czeslaw Milosz, translated by the author and Robert Hass

When the sun rises it illuminates stupidity and guilt which are hidden in the nooks of memory and invisible at noon.

Here walks a many-tiered man. On his upper floors a morning crispness and underneath, dark chambers which are frightening to enter.

He asks forgiveness from the spirits of the absent ones who twitter far below at the tables of buried cafes.

What does that man do? He is frightened of a verdict, now, for instance, or after his death.

translated by conor

When the newspaper rolls It reports foolishness and humiliation From the tossed doorsteps that are red all over.

The many-tiered dog is walked. The color is a crisp dawn and the smell, a dead fox or a bitch in heat.

He plays dead for the vacant shirts with their swirling eyes speaking and sitting alternately.

What does he do? He avoids punishment, and chokes off his bark, all that's left of his wormy heart.

Tribut to the Angels [30] by H. D.

We see her hand in her lap, smoothing the apple-green

or the apple-russet silk; we see her hand at her throat,

fingering a talisman brought by a crusader from Jerusalem;

we see her hand unknot a Syrian veil or lay down a Venetian shawl

on a polished table that reflects half a miniature broken column;

we see her stare past a mirror through an open window,

where boat follows boat on the lagoon; there are white flowers on the water.

translated by conor

We are shown a man running. Chaos punctuates this frantic turn

or that leapt fence; he swallows a smooth alley;

and descends a square wearing the light from an open window;

we see his fingers untie a doorknob or conjure a keyhole just previous

from an overcoat that recalls the angle of a brilliant Galaxy

when viewed through a lens; we peer into this image,

where star follows star in the darkness; there is no way to close the window.

from to the light house, time passes, part nine, by virginia woolf

   The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling , seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and the mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle trust itself between the tiles in the larder. The swallows nested in the drawing-room; the floor was strewn with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls; rafters were laid bare; rats carried off this and that to gnaw behind the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterflies burst from the crysailis and pattered their life out on the window pane. Poppies sowed themselves among the dahlias; the lawn waved with long grass; giant artichokes towered among roses; a fringed carnation flowered among the cabbages; while the gentle tapping of a weed at the window had become, on winters' nights, a drumming from sturdy trees and thorned briars which made the whole room green in summer.

   What power could now prevent the fertility, the insensibility of nature?