For today's small effort I'm trying the prompt from the NaPoWriMo site. It's a translation exercise, and to do it I've gone, as suggested to the Poetry International Language List. I chose Irish and then a poem by Bríd Ní Mhóráin called Aisling Dhuibhneach. I didn't look at the translation, and as I'm in the middle of another project at the moment, I was only going to do the first stanza but then I got into the complete craziness of the exercise and as suggested, I did not worry about my "translation" making any sense!
So here we go:
Longing Out of Reach
It is more distant, your place of birth
and I fear a fuss from not seeing you.
Been out of reach and in bondage
at daybreak or in a gale—bright, not grey,
treading softly as to the Ark of the Covenant.
Balefully we sing dirges in mountains
or catch our breath at the foot of darkness.
Gleaming we flourish in a chaos of fusion
pumped up towards a marble sky
'Choose carefully, lest your companion this time
be ugliness in the small ocean hours.
No body leaves or trembling lies
curled in stealthy stasis until led' finally
a nuance of blasphemy no grain of sense
too chaste begs belief this insincere,
but suppose the close of none
but a brush to shut, not mind, now
against a broken heart that lurches with pain.
Rough to plead, can't choose amuse
or offer great teachings to heal and measure.
So anguished the fine hearth
to seize the length of touching anathema.
Fan in a tent a tabula rasa to place for you
or choose the usual blather
that searches an chooses instead
by golden soul alone and cringing
to burn and go post haste,
and stagger at the abyss.
and stagger at the abyss.
And that's it, kids, over and out. My Irish grandparents are doubtless turning in their graves!
§
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