Translations

Take something you like and re-write it.

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;
darting 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?