Found in Translation II
Poetry is famously what is lost in translation, but I like to believe I've found Poetry in translation, at times...
These are some of my best translations. Please note that I follow in the footsteps of the great Rabindranath Tagore, who said he needed leeway when translating his Bengali poems into English, if he wanted to create poetry in his second language. Therefore, I call my translations “loose translations” and “interpretations” to let readers know they’re not word-for-word translations. And it seems only fitting to begin with a poem by my mentor…
Come As You Are
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Come as you are, forget appearances!
Is your hair untamable, your part uneven, your bodice unfastened? Never mind.
Come as you are, forget appearances!
Skip with quicksilver steps across the grass.
If your feet glisten with dew, if your anklets slip, if your beaded necklace slides off? Never mind.
Skip with quicksilver steps across the grass.
Do you see the clouds enveloping the sky?
Flocks of cranes erupt from the riverbank, fitful gusts ruffle the fields, anxious cattle tremble in their stalls.
Do you see the clouds enveloping the sky?
You loiter in vain over your toilet lamp; it flickers and dies in the wind.
Who will care that your eyelids have not been painted with lamp-black, when your pupils are darker than thunderstorms?
You loiter in vain over your toilet lamp; it flickers and dies in the wind.
Come as you are, forget appearances!
If the wreath lies unwoven, who cares? If the bracelet is unfastened, let it fall. The sky grows dark; it is late.
Come as you are, forget appearances!
Only Let Me Love You
by Michael R. Burch
after Rabindranath Tagore
Only let me love you, and the pain
of living will be easier to bear.
Only let me love you. Nay, refrain
from pinning up your hair!
Only let me love you. Stay, remain.
A face so lovely never needs repair!
Only let me love you to the strains
of Rabindranath on a soft sitar.
Only let me love you, while the rain
makes music: gentle, eloquent, sincere.
Only let me love you. Don’t complain
you need more time to make yourself more fair!
Only let me love you. Stay, remain.
No need for rouge or lipstick! Only share
your tender body swiftly ...
There are more translations by Rabindranath Tagore, one of the world’s great poets and a personal favorite of mine, later on this page.
Thomas Campion was an English poet who composed poems in Latin…
NOVELTIES
by Thomas Campion, an English poet who composed poems in Latin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their whores for exotic positions.
Impressionum plurium librum laudat
Librarius; scortum nec non minus leno.
THE PLAGIARIST or THE PLAGIARTIST
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Dogs raise a ruckus at the stench of a thief,
so what would they say about you, given speech?
Suspecto quid fure canes cum,
Pontice, latrent Dixissent melius, si potuere loqui?
How Long the Night
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song ...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast—
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.
In my opinion, “How Long the Night” is one of the most beautiful, most touching and most moving poems in the English language, and one of its very best early rhyming poems.
This is my translation of a wonderful poem by an early Scottish master, William Dunbar. "Sweet Rose of Virtue" has been one of my favorite poems since I first read it. I decided to translate it myself, to make it more accessible to modern readers:
Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar [1460-1525], a Scottish poet who wrote in an English-Scots dialect
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that is held most dear―
except only that you are merciless.
Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I saw flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet nowhere one leaf nor petal of rue.
I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair rose and left her downcast,
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that I long to plant love's root again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.
If the tenth line seems confusing, it helps to know that rue symbolizes pity and also has medicinal uses; thus I believe the unrequiting lover is being accused of a lack of compassion and perhaps of withholding her healing attentions. The penultimate line can be taken as a rather naughty double entendre, but I will leave that interpretation up to the reader!
This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 14th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
whenever it enters my thought:
regarding this world's joy,
how everything comes to naught.
Wynter wakeneth al my care,
Nou this leves waxeth bare.
Ofte y sike ant mourne sare
When hit cometh in my thoht
Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht.
I Have Labored Sore
(anonymous medieval lyric circa the fifteenth century)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I have labored sore and suffered death,
so now I rest and catch my breath.
But I shall come and call right soon
heaven and earth and hell to doom.
Then all shall know both devil and man
just who I was and what I am.
Fowles in the Frith
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
1.
The warblers in the wood,
the fishes in the flood
and I must go mad:
such sorrow I've had
for beasts of bone and blood!
2.
The fowls in the forest,
the fishes in the flood
and I must go mad:
such sorrow I've had
for beasts of bone and blood!
Sounds like an early animal rights activist! The use of "and" is intriguing ... is the poet saying that his walks in the wood drive him mad because he is also a "beast of bone and blood" and facing a similar fate?
I am of Ireland
(anonymous Medieval Irish lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I am of Ireland,
and of the holy realm of Ireland.
Gentlefolk, I pray thee:
for the sake of saintly charity,
come dance with me
in Ireland!
The original poem still smacks of German, with "Ich" for "I." But a metamorphosis was clearly in progress: English poetry was evolving to employ meter and rhyme, as well as Anglo-Saxon alliteration. And it's interesting to note that "ballad," "ballet" and "ball" all have the same root: the Latin ballare (to dance) and the Italian ballo/balleto (a dance). Think of a farm community assembling for a hoe-down, then dancing a two-step to music with lyrics. That is apparently how many early English poems originated. And the more regular meter of the evolving poems would suit music well.
A Lyke-Wake Dirge
(anonymous medieval lyric circa the 16th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The Lie-Awake Dirge is “the night watch kept over a corpse.”
This one night, this one night,
every night and all;
fire and sleet and candlelight,
and Christ receive thy soul.
When from this earthly life you pass
every night and all,
to confront your past you must come at last,
and Christ receive thy soul.
If you ever donated socks and shoes,
every night and all,
sit right down and slip yours on,
and Christ receive thy soul.
But if you never helped your brother,
every night and all,
walk barefoot through the flames of hell,
and Christ receive thy soul.
If ever you shared your food and drink,
every night and all,
the fire will never make you shrink,
and Christ receive thy soul.
But if you never helped your brother,
every night and all,
walk starving through the black abyss,
and Christ receive thy soul.
This one night, this one night,
every night and all;
fire and sleet and candlelight,
and Christ receive thy soul.
Excerpt from “Ubi Sunt Qui Ante Nos Fuerunt?”
(anonymous Middle English poem, circa 1275)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Where are the men who came before us,
who led hounds and hawks to the hunt,
who commanded fields and woods?
Where are the elegant ladies in their boudoirs
who braided gold through their hair
and had such fair complexions?
Once eating and drinking gladdened their hearts;
they enjoyed their games;
men bowed before them;
they bore themselves loftily …
But then, in an eye’s twinkling,
they were gone.
Where now are their laughter and their songs,
the trains of their dresses,
the arrogance of their entrances and exits,
their hawks and their hounds?
All their joy has vanished;
their “well” has come to “oh, well”
and to many dark days …
Pity Mary
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Now the sun passes under the wood:
I rue, Mary, thy face—fair, good.
Now the sun passes under the tree:
I rue, Mary, thy son and thee.
In the poem above, note how "wood" and "tree" invoke the cross while "sun" and "son" seem to invoke each other. Sun-day is also Son-day, to Christians. The anonymous poet who wrote the poem above may have been punning the words "sun" and "son." The poem is also known as "Now Goeth Sun Under Wood" and "Now Go'th Sun Under Wood."
There are more Old English and Middle English translations later on this page.
Catullus CI aka Carmina 101: “His Brother’s Burial”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Through many lands and over many seas
I have journeyed, brother, to these wretched rites,
to this final acclamation of the dead ...
and to speak — however ineffectually — to your voiceless ashes
now that Fate has wrested you away from me.
Alas, my dear brother, wrenched from my arms so cruelly,
accept these last offerings, these small tributes
blessed by our fathers’ traditions, these small gifts for the dead.
Please accept, by custom, these tokens drenched with a brother’s tears,
and, for all eternity, brother, “Hail and Farewell.”
There are more translations of poems by Catullus later on this page, including my English translation of his Latin translation of an ancient Greek poem by the immortal Sappho of Lesbos!
"The Descent into the Underworld"
by Virgil
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
for Martin Mc Carthy
The Sibyl began to speak:
“God-blooded Trojan, son of Anchises,
descending into the Underworld’s easy
since Death’s dark door stands eternally unbarred.
But to retrace one’s steps and return to the surface:
that’s the conundrum, that’s the catch!
Godsons have done it, the chosen few
whom welcoming Jupiter favored
and whose virtue merited heaven.
However, even the Blessed find headway’s hard:
immense woods barricade boggy bottomland
where the Cocytus glides with its dark coils.
But if you insist on ferrying the Styx twice
and twice traversing Tartarus,
if Love demands you indulge in such madness,
listen closely to how you must proceed...”
Vera Pavlova (1963-) is a leading contemporary Russian poet. Born in Moscow, she is a graduate of the Schnittke College of Music and the Gnessin Academy of Music, where she specialized in music history. Vera has worked as a guide at the Shaliapin Museum in Moscow and has published several essays on music. She began writing poetry at age twenty, after the birth of her first daughter, while she was still at the maternity ward. Vera is the author of twenty collections of poetry, four opera librettos, and the lyrics to two cantatas. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker and other major literary publications.
I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I test the tightrope,
balancing a child
in each arm.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
There are more poems by Vera Pavlova later on this page.
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837) was a Russian poet, playwright and novelist. He has been called Russia's greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.
I Loved You
by Alexander Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
1.
I loved you once … perhaps I love you still …
perhaps such erratic flickerings remain.
But please don’t let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.
I loved you … thus the hopelessness I knew …
the jealousy, the shyness and the pain,
resulted in my hope that somehow you
might find the grace to fall in love again.
2.
I loved you … perhaps I love you still …
perhaps for a while such emotions may remain.
But please don’t let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.
I loved you … thus the hopelessness I knew …
The jealousy, the diffidence, the pain
resulted in two hearts so wholly true
the gods might grant us leave to love again.
3.
I loved you once, and love might still be living,
its fading flame concealed within my core,
But please don't let this fill you with misgiving:
I do not want to hurt you anymore.
In hopeless, silent love I nearly perished:
It made me jealous, and it scared me too.
But now I pray that someday you’ll be cherished
By someone who will love you as I do.
The original Russian poem:
Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.
Friendship
by Alexander Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
What's “friendship”? The hangover's daze,
The mild aftermath of outrage,
Exchanges in a wounded ego’s haze,
The humiliation of patronage.
I Outlasted Every Desire
by Alexander Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I outlasted every desire;
for I and my dreams had to part.
Now grief alone is left, entire,
from gleanings of a barren heart.
The maelstroms of Fate
have left my erstwhile laurel stripped;
thus I live alone without a mate
and face my end, thus, ill-equipped.
Thus on a naked tree-limb, shorn
by relentless winter's furious chill,
a single leaf, too lately born,
unseasonal, lies trembling still.
Untitled
I've lived to embalm my desires,
for my golden dreams to corrode to rust;
now all that's left are banked fires
that leave my heart ashen dust.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Struck down by the cruel winds of Fate,
my quaint springtime blooms disappear.
Now lonely and sad, I await
Winter’s wail that the end-time draws near.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Habit is Heaven's tame redress:
it tugs down the skirts of Happiness.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Till, conquered by gusts of cold air,
as Winter approaches, I find,
on a branch that is otherwise bare,
trembling, a leaf left behind.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Whom to love, to trust and treasure,
who won’t betray us in the end?
Whose kindest thoughts will measure
our words as we intend?
—Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Then came a moment of realization:
I looked again and you were there,
a fleeting glimpse of perfection,
of all that’s exquisite and rare.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
When I want to understand you,
I study your obscurities.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Never despise the translator, he's the courier of civilization.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Never despise the translator, he's the courier/connector/relay/conduit/Pony Express of civilization.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My whole life was covenanted to this meeting with you…—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I was not put here to entertain Tsars.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Fear no insult, seek no crown, receive flattery and slander with equal indifference, and never argue with a fool.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Better ten thousand unrealized dreams than never to have dreamed at all.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
If only you knew the inferno within, which I attempt to tamp down with reason!—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The less we love women, the easier they are to charm.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
As poetry requires inspiration, so does geometry.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Ecstasy is a glass full of tea melting a sugar cube.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Unrequited love is not an affront but an incentive to excel next time.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Moral maxims are most useful when nothing else can excuse our failures.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Write for pleasure, publish for perks.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Write for pleasure, publish for pay/pelf/perks/plenty/plenitude/prosperity.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
An elevating illusion’s more enlightening than innumerable low truths.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Better an exalting illusion than ten thousand truths.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
As long as I live in one heart, I remain immortal.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
As long as I live in one heart, my memory’s immortal.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet generally considered to be a major poet of the German language. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French.
Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor the centering loins make us smile
at the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like an inchoate star—demanding our belief.
You must change your life.
Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.
There are more Rilke translations later on this page, including the first two of his Duino Elegies.
Rondel: Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.
Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.
By all truth, I tell you faithfully
that you are of life and death my queen;
for at my death this truth shall be seen:
your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.
"Merciless Beauty" is my favorite poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. And yet how many readers are even aware of it today? I hope my translations help more modern readers connect with the great poets of the past. There are more translations of Chaucer later on this page.
In my opinion Charles D’Orleans (c. 1394-1465) is one of the world’s most undervalued poets, and he may be the greatest love poet of all time. This is my favorite poem of his.
Oft in My Thought
by Charles d'Orleans
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet thought's been wrested from me, clear,
Since death, alas, has sealed her under clay
And robbed the world of all that's precious here―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.
For me to keep my manner and my thought
Acceptable, as suits my age's hour?
While proving that I never once forgot
Her worth? It tests my power!
I serve her now with masses and with prayer;
For it would be a shame for me to stray
Far from my faith, when my time's drawing near—
God keep her soul, I can no better say.
Now earthly profits fail, since all is lost
And the cost of everything became so dear;
Therefore, O Lord, who rules the higher host,
Take my good deeds, as many as there are,
And crown her, Lord, above in your bright sphere,
As heaven's truest maid! And may I say:
Most good, most fair, most likely to bring cheer—
God keep her soul, I can no better say.
When I praise her, or hear her praises raised,
I recall how recently she brought me pleasure;
Then my heart floods like an overflowing bay
And makes me wish to dress for my own bier—
God keep her soul, I can no better say.
The text of the original poem can be found here. There are more poems by Charles d'Orleans later on this page.
If there was one thing I was damn sure I'd never do, it was translate poetry. Writing original poetry in one's native tongue is hard enough; only a masochist would attempt to translate someone else's poems into other languages. And I sure as hell never dreamed of translating Anglo-Saxon or Ye Olde Englishe poems into modern English, because I had found high-school- and college-enforced readings of lengthy "Beowulf" and Chaucer passages beyond tedious. But something made me change my mind: the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem “Wulf and Eadwacer.” I fell in love with “Wulf” but really didn't care for any of the translations I was able to find. Hence I was forced to attempt the impossible, or, at least, the highly implausible!
Wulf and Eadwacer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My clan's curs pursue him like crippled game;
they'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
It is otherwise with us.
Wulf's on one island; I'm on another.
His island's a fortress, fastened by fens. (fastened=secured)
Here, bloodthirsty curs howl for carnage.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
It is otherwise with us.
My hopes pursued Wulf like panting hounds,
but whenever it rained—how I wept!—
the boldest cur clutched me in his paws:
good feelings to a point, but the end loathsome!
Wulf, O, my Wulf, my ache for you
has made me sick; your seldom-comings
have left me famished, deprived of real meat.
Have you heard, Eadwacer? Watchdog!
A wolf has borne our wretched whelp to the woods.
One can easily sever what never was one:
our song together.
Was the first truly great poem of the English language written by a female scop, if “Wulf” predates “Beowulf”? What an earthy, down and dirty, brutally honest poem written from a female perspective about what sounds like war, a family being split apart, and perhaps rape, sex slavery and child abduction and/or infanticide. Much remains in doubt: did Wulf abduct the child, perhaps thinking the child was his, or did the the mother, the rapist or the rapist's wife get rid of the child? In my opinion “Wulf” is one of the truly great poems of the then-fledgling English language, so my translation seems like a worthwhile endeavor, especially if other people like what I've done.
There was another ancient poem that vexed me because I didn't care for the translations I had read, and it was the English language’s oldest extant poem:
Cædmon's Hymn
(Anglo-Saxon/Old English lyric circa 658-680 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Now let us honour heaven-kingdom's Guardian,
the might of the Architect and his mind-plans,
the work of the Glory-Father. First he, the Eternal Lord,
established the foundation of wonders.
Then he, the Primeval Poet, created heaven as a roof
for the sons of men, Holy Creator,
Maker of mankind. Then he, the eternal Lord,
afterwards made men middle-earth: Master almighty!
"Cædmon's Hymn" was composed sometime between 658 and 680 AD and appears to be the oldest extant poem in the English language. According to the Venerable Bede (673-735), Cædmon was an illiterate herdsman who was given the gift of poetic composition by an angel. In the original poem, hardly a word is recognizable as English because Cædmon was writing in a somewhat Anglicized form of ancient German. The word "England" harkens back to Angle-land; the Angles were a Germanic tribe. Nevertheless, by Cædmon's time the foundations of English poetry were being laid, particularly in the areas of accentual meter and alliteration. Poets were considered to be "Makers" (as in William Dunbar's "Lament for the Makaris"), and poetry was considered to have a divine origin, so the poem may express a sort of affinity between the poet and his God.
Bede's "Death Song" is one of the best poems of the fledgling English language now known as Old English or Anglo-Saxon English. Written circa 735 AD, the poem may have been composed by Bede on his death-bed. It is the most-copied Old English poem, with 45 extant versions. The poem is also known as "Bede's Lament." It was glossed by a 13th century scribe known as the Tremulous Hand of Worchester because of the "shaky" nature of his handwriting. Was the celebrated scholar known and revered as the Venerable Bede also one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon poets? The answer appears to be "yes," since Bede was doctus in nostris carminibus ("learned in our song") according to his most famous disciple, Saint Cuthbert. Cuthbert's letter on Bede's death, the Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae, is commonly taken by modern scholars to indicate that Bede composed the five-line vernacular Anglo-Saxon poem known as "Bede’s Death Song." However, there is no way to be certain that Bede was the poem's original author.
Bede's Death Song
(Anglo-Saxon/Old English lyric circa 735 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Facing Death, that inescapable journey,
who can be wiser than he
who reflects, while breath yet remains,
on whether his life brought others happiness, or pains,
since his soul may yet win delight's or night's way
after his death-day.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was a major German poet, playwright, novelist, humorist, essayist, theater director and songwriter. Brecht is highly regarded today for his poetry, for his plays such as Antigone, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Threepenny Opera, Baal, In the Jungle and Drums in the Night, and for his lyrics to the song "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" ("Mack the Knife"), which became a number one hit for Bobby Darin. Brecht fled Germany in 1933, when Hitler assumed power. A number of Brecht's poems were written from the perspective of a man who sees his country becoming increasingly fascist, xenophobic and militaristic. For instance, the first poem below was written by Brecht about the Nazi book burnings orchestrated by Hitler's propaganda-meister Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis burned the books of writers they considered to be "decadent," including those of Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway and even Helen Keller. Also among the books burned were those of the great German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who in his 1820-1821 play Almansor accurately predicted, “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." ("Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.")
Die Bücherverbrennung (“The Burning of the Books”)
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.
Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged — he'd been excluded!
He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fiery letters to the incompetents in power —
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen —
Haven't I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!
There are more Brecht translations later on this page.
Paul Celan’s "Todesfuge" is one of the most famous Holocaust poems, with its haunting refrain of a German "master of death" killing Jews by day and writing "Your golden hair Margarete" by starlight. The poem demonstrates how terrible things can become when one human being is granted absolute power over others. Paul Celan was the pseudonym of Paul Antschel. (Celan is an anagram of Ancel, the Romanian form of his surname.) Celan was born in Czernowitz, Romania in 1920. The son of German-speaking Jews, Celan spoke German, Romanian, Russian, French and understood Yiddish. During the Holocaust, his parents were deported and eventually died in Nazi labor camps; Celan spent eighteen months in a Nazi concentration camp before escaping.
Todesfuge ("Death Fugue")
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Black milk of daybreak, we drink it come morning;
we drink it come midday; we drink it, come night;
we drink it and drink it.
We are digging a grave like a hole in the sky; there's sufficient room to lie there.
The man of the house plays with vipers; he writes
in the Teutonic darkness, "Your golden hair Margarete ..."
He writes poems by the stars, whistles hounds to stand by,
whistles Jews to dig graves, where together they'll lie.
He commands us to strike up bright tunes for the dance!
Black milk of daybreak, we drink you each morning;
we drink you at midday; we drink you at night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house plays with serpents, he writes ...
he writes when the night falls, "Your golden hair Margarete ...
Your ashen hair Shulamith ..."
We are digging dark graves where there's more room, on high.
His screams, "You dig there!" and "Hey you, dance and sing!"
He grabs his black nightstick, his eyes pallid blue,
cries, "Hey you, dig more deeply! You others, keep dancing!"
Black milk of daybreak, we drink you each morning;
we drink you at midday, we drink you at night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house writes, "Your golden hair Margarete ...
Your ashen hair Shulamith." He toys with our lives.
He screams, "Play for me! Death's a master of Germany!"
His screams, "Stroke dark strings, soon like black smoke you'll rise
to a grave in the clouds; there's sufficient room for Jews there!"
Black milk of daybreak, we drink you at midnight;
we drink you at noon; Death's the master of Germany!
We drink you come evening; we drink you and drink you ...
a master of Deutschland, with eyes deathly blue.
With bullets of lead our pale master will murder you!
He writes when the night falls, "Your golden hair Margarete ..."
He unleashes his hounds, grants us graves in the skies.
He plays with his serpents; he's a master of Germany ...
your golden hair Margarete ...
your ashen hair Shulamith.
O, Little Root of a Dream
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
O, little root of a dream
you enmire me here;
I'm undermined by blood —
no longer seen,
enslaved by death.
Touch the curve of my face,
that there may yet be an earthly language of ardor,
that someone else's eyes
may see yet see me,
though I'm blind,
here where you
deny me voice.
You Were My Death
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You were my death;
I could hold you
when everything abandoned me —
even breath.
Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish Holocaust survivor.
Shema
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You who live secure
in your comfortable houses,
who return each evening to find
warm food,
welcoming faces ...
consider whether this is a man:
who toils in the mud,
who knows no peace,
who fights for crusts of bread,
who dies at another man's whim,
at his "yes" or his "no."
Consider whether this is a woman:
bereft of hair,
of a recognizable name
because she lacks the strength to remember,
her eyes as void
and her womb as frigid
as a frog's in winter.
Consider that such horrors have been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them in your hearts
when you lounge in your house,
when you walk outside,
when you go to bed,
when you rise.
Repeat them to your children,
or may your house crumble
and disease render you helpless
so that even your offspring avert their faces from you.
Buna
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Wasted feet, cursed earth,
the interminable gray morning
as Buna smokes corpses through industrious chimneys.
A day like every other day awaits us.
The terrible whistle shrilly announces dawn:
"You, O pale multitudes with your sad, lifeless faces,
welcome the monotonous horror of the mud ...
another day of suffering has begun."
Weary companion, I see you by heart.
I empathize with your dead eyes, my disconsolate friend.
In your breast you carry cold, hunger, nothingness.
Life has broken what's left of the courage within you.
Colorless one, you once were a strong man,
A courageous woman once walked at your side.
But now you, my empty companion, are bereft of a name,
my forsaken friend who can no longer weep,
so poor you can no longer grieve,
so tired you no longer can shiver with fear.
O, spent once-strong man,
if we were to meet again
in some other world, sweet beneath the sun,
with what kind faces would we recognize each other?
Buna was the largest Auschwitz sub-camp.
Wladyslaw Szlengel wrote the next poem about his friend Janusz Korczak. Both were victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Excerpts from "A Page from the Deportation Diary"
by Wladyslaw Szlengel
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I saw Janusz Korczak walking today,
leading the children, at the head of the line.
They were dressed in their best clothes—immaculate, if gray.
Some say the weather wasn't dismal, but fine.
They were in their best jumpers and laughing (not loud),
but if they'd been soiled, tell me—who could complain?
They walked like calm heroes through the haunted crowd,
five by five, in a whipping rain.
The pallid, the trembling, watched high overhead,
through barely cracked windows—pale, transfixed with dread.
And now and then, from the high, tolling bell
a strange moan escaped, like a sea gull's torn cry.
Their "superiors" looked on, their eyes hard as stone.
So let us not flinch, as they march on, to die.
Footfall . . . then silence . . . the cadence of feet . . .
O, who can console them, their last mile so drear?
The church bells peal on, over shocked Leszno Street.
Will Jesus Christ save them? The high bells career.
No, God will not save them. Nor you, friend, nor I.
But let us not flinch, as they march on, to die.
No one will offer the price of their freedom.
No one will proffer a single word.
His eyes hard as gavels, the silent policeman
agrees with the priest and his terrible Lord:
"Give them the Sword!"
At the town square there is no intervention.
No one tugs Schmerling's sleeve. No one cries
"Rescue the children!" The air, thick with tension,
reeks with the odor of vodka, and lies.
How calmly he walks, with a child in each arm:
Gut Doktor Korczak, please keep them from harm!
A fool rushes up with a reprieve in hand:
"Look Janusz Korczak—please look, you've been spared!"
No use for that. One resolute man,
uncomprehending that no one else cared
enough to defend them,
his choice is to end with them.
Ber Horowitz (1895-1942) served in the Austrian army during WWI, where he was a medic to Italian prisoners of war. He studied medicine in Vienna and was published in many Yiddish newspapers. Fluent in several languages, Horowitz translated Polish and Ukrainian writings into Yiddish and wrote poetry in Yiddish. He died during the Holocaust but it is not clear if he was murdered by the Nazis or peasants.
Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray ...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes.
The birds have fled
far overseas;
Tomorrow I’ll migrate too,
I said ...
These gloomy autumn days
it rains and rains.
Woe to the bird
Who remains ...
This is powerful little poem, laden with irony. This is my personal interpretation and analysis of the poem: In the first stanza the poet longs for a pair of "deep blue eyes" because the Nazis prized Aryan features and despised Jews, who typically have darker hair, skin and eyes. Therefore, blue eyes are identified with a blue sky, and both are contrasted with darker, less "colorful" eyes and skies. In the second stanza, the birds able to migrate have all fled. The poet "promises" to migrate too, but realizes this is unlikely if not impossible. In the third stanza, the poet describes a personal plight similar to that of a bird who failed to migrate before bad weather made migration impossible. The poem's title is also ironic, as "Der Himmel" can mean both "the sky" and "the heavens." Where was God during the Holocaust, the poet seems to be asking, ironically. Horvitz may also have been commenting on the fact that many German Christians believed Jews would be denied entrance to heaven.
Doctorn
"Doctors"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Early this morning I bandaged
the lilac tree outside my house;
I took thin branches that had broken away
and patched their wounds with clay.
My mother stood there watering
her window-level flower bed;
The morning sun, quite motherly,
kissed us both on our heads!
What a joy, my child, to heal!
Finished doctoring, or not?
The eggs are nicely poached
And the milk's a-boil in the pot.
Broit
“Bread”
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness. Why?
On the hard uncomfortable floor the exhausted people lie.
Flung everywhere, scattered over the broken theater floor,
the exhausted people sleep. Night. Late. Too tired to snore.
At midnight a little boy cries wildly into the gloom:
"Mommy, I’m afraid! Let’s go home!”
His mother, reawakened into this frightful place,
presses her frightened child even closer to her breast …
"If you cry, I’ll leave you here, all alone!
A little boy must sleep ... this, now, is our new home.”
Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness all around,
exhausted people sleeping on the hard ground.
"My Lament"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Nothingness enveloped me
as tender green toadstools
lie blanketed by snow
with its thick, heavy prayer shawl…
After that, nothing could hurt me…
Ninety-Three Daughters of Israel
a Holocaust poem by Chaya Feldman
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
We washed our bodies
and cleansed ourselves;
we purified our souls
and became clean.
Death does not terrify us;
we are ready to confront him.
While alive we served God
and now we can best serve our people
by refusing to be taken prisoner.
We have made a covenant of the heart,
all ninety-three of us;
together we lived and learned,
and now together we choose to depart.
The hour is upon us
as I write these words;
there is barely enough time to transcribe this prayer ...
Brethren, wherever you may be,
honor the Torah we lived by
and the Psalms we loved.
Read them for us, as well as for yourselves,
and someday when the Beast
has devoured his last prey,
we hope someone will say Kaddish for us:
we ninety-three daughters of Israel.
Amen
From a 1943 letter Chaya Feldman wrote to Meir Shenkolevsky, the secretary of the world Bais Yaakov movement, she and the 93 daughters of Israel chose to drink poison rather than be “visited” by Nazis who had left them in only their shirts. In her letter Feldman said the girls were not afraid to die and asked only that others say Kaddish for them.
bbb
BRECHT (II)
Parting
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
We embrace;
my fingers trace
rich cloth
while yours encounter only moth-
eaten fabric.
A quick hug:
you were invited to the gay soiree
while the minions of the "law"
relentlessly pursue me.
We talk about the weather
and our eternal friendship's magic.
Anything else would be too bitter,
too tragic.
The Mask of Evil
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
A Japanese carving hangs on my wall —
the mask of an ancient demon, limned with golden lacquer.
Not unsympathetically, I observe
the forehead's bulging veins,
the tremendous strain
such malevolence requires.
Radio Poem
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You, little box, held tightly
to me
during my escape,
so that your delicate tubes do not break;
carried from house to house, from ship to train,
so that my enemies may continue communicating with me
by land and by sea
and even in my bed, to my pain;
the last thing I hear at night, the first when I arise,
recounting their many conquests and my cares,
promise me not to go silent in a sudden
surprise.
Bertolt Brecht Epigrams and Quotations
Everyone chases the way happiness feels,
unaware how it nips at their heels.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The world of learning takes a crazy turn
when teachers are taught to think and discern!
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Unhappy, the land that lacks heroes.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Hungry man, reach for the book:
it's a hook,
a harpoon.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Because things are the way they are,
things can never stay as they were.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
War is like love; true ...
it finds a way through.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
What happens to the hole
when the cheese is no longer whole?
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
It's easier to rob by setting up a bank
than by threatening the poor clerk.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Do not fear death so much, or strife,
but rather fear the inadequate life.
— loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
CATULLUS (II)
Catullus LI aka Carmina 51: “That Man”
This is Catullus’s translation of a poem by Sappho of Lesbos
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I’d call that man the equal of the gods,
or,
could it be forgiven
in heaven,
their superior,
because to him space is given
to bask in your divine presence,
to gaze upon you, smile, and listen
to your ambrosial laughter
which leaves men senseless
here and hereafter.
Meanwhile, in my misery,
I’m left speechless.
Lesbia, there's nothing left of me
but a voiceless tongue grown thick in my mouth
and a thin flame running south...
My limbs tingle, my ears ring, my eyes water
till they swim in darkness.
Call it leisure, Catullus, or call it idleness,
whatever it is that incapacitates you.
By any other name it’s the nemesis
fallen kings, empires and cities rue.
Catullus XLIX aka Carmina 49: “A Toast to Cicero”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Cicero, please confess:
You’re drunk on your success!
All men of good taste attest
That you’re the very best—
At making speeches, first class!
While I’m the dregs of the glass.
Catullus LXV aka Carmina 65
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Hortalus, I’m exhausted by relentless grief,
and have thus abandoned the learned virgins;
nor can my mind, so consumed by malaise,
partake of the Muses' mete fruit;
for lately the Lethaean flood laves my brother's
death-pale foot with its dark waves,
where, beyond mortal sight, ghostly Ilium
disgorges souls beneath the Rhoetean shore.
Never again will I hear you speak,
O my brother, more loved than life,
never see you again, unless I behold you hereafter.
But surely I'll always love you,
always sing griefstricken dirges for your demise,
such as Procne sings under the dense branches’ shadows,
lamenting the lot of slain Itys.
Yet even amidst such unfathomable sorrows, O Hortalus,
I nevertheless send you these, my recastings of Callimachus,
lest you conclude your entrusted words slipped my mind,
winging off on wayward winds, as a suitor’s forgotten apple
hidden in the folds of her dress escapes a virgin's chaste lap;
for when she starts at her mother's arrival, it pops out,
then downward it rolls, headlong to the ground,
as a guilty blush flushes her downcast face.
[What do the gods know, with their superior airs,
wiser than a mother’s tears
for her lost child?
If they had hearts, surely they would be beguiled,
repeal the sentence of death!
Since they have none,
or only hearts of stone,
believers, save your breath.
—Michael R. Burch, after Catullus]
Catullus II aka Carmina 2: “Lesbia’s Sparrow”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Sparrow, my sweetheart’s pet,
with whom she plays cradled to her breast,
or in her lap,
giving you her fingertip to peck,
provoking you to nip its nib ...
Whenever she’s flushed with pleasure
my gorgeous darling plays such dear little games:
to relieve her longings, I suspect,
until her ardour abates.
Oh, if only I could play with you as gaily,
and alleviate my own longings!
Catullus V aka Carmina 5: “Let us live, Lesbia, let us love”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I take this to be an “accounting” poem because conturbare is an accounting term for “fiddling the figures.”
Let us live, Lesbia, let us love,
and let the judgments of ancient moralists
count less than a farthing to us!
Suns may set then rise again,
but when our brief light sets,
we will sleep through perpetual night.
Give me a thousand kisses, a hundred more,
another thousand, then a second hundred,
yet another thousand, then a third hundred...
Then, once we’ve tallied the many thousands,
let’s jumble the ledger, so that even we
(and certainly no malicious, evil-eyed enemy)
will ever know there were so many kisses!
Catullus VII aka Carmina 7: “How Many Kisses”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You ask, Lesbia, how many kisses
are enough, or more than enough, to satisfy me?
As many as the Libyan sands
swirling in incense-bearing Cyrene
between the torrid oracle of Jove
and the sacred tomb of Battiades.
Or as many as the stars observing amorous men
making love furtively on a moonless night.
As many of your kisses are enough,
and more than enough, for mad Catullus,
as long as there are too many to be counted by inquisitors
and by malicious-tongued bewitchers.
Catullus VIII aka Carmina 8: “Advice to Himself”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Snap out of it Catullus, stop this foolishness!
It’s time to cut losses!
What is dead is gone, accept it.
Once brilliant suns shone on you both,
when you trotted about wherever she led,
and loved her as never another before.
That was a time of such happiness,
when your desire intersected her will.
But now she doesn’t want you any more.
Be resolute, weak as you are, stop chasing mirages!
What you need is not love, but a clean break.
Goodbye girl, now Catullus stands firm.
Never again Lesbia! Catullus is clear:
He won’t miss you. Won’t crave you. Catullus is cold.
Now it’s you who will grieve, when nobody calls.
It’s you who will weep that you’re ruined.
Who’ll submit to you now? Admire your beauty?
Whom will you love? Whose girl will you be?
Who will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?
But you, Catullus, you must break with the past, hold fast.
Catullus LX aka Carmina 60: “Lioness”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Did an African mountain lioness
or a howling Scylla beget you from the nether region of her loins,
my harsh goddess? Are you so pitiless you would hold in contempt
this supplicant voicing his inconsolable despair?
Are you really that cruel-hearted?
Catullus LXX aka Carmina 70: “Marriage Vows”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My sweetheart says she’d marry no one else but me,
not even Jupiter, if he were to ask her!
But what a girl says to her eager lover
ought to be written on the wind or in running water.
D’ORLEANS (II)
In My Imagined Book
by Charles d’Orleans
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
In my imagined Book
my heart endeavored to explain
its history of grief, and pain,
illuminated by the tears
that welled to blur those well-loved years
of former happiness's gains,
in my imagined Book.
Alas, where should the reader look
beyond these drops of sweat, their stains,
all the effort & pain it took
& which I recorded night and day
in my imagined Book?
The text of the original poem can be found here.
Rondel: Your Smiling Mouth
by Charles d'Orleans
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample breasts and slender arms' twin chains,
Your hands so smooth, each finger straight and plain,
Your little feet—please, what more can I say?
It is my fetish when you're far away
To muse on these and thus to soothe my pain—
Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample breasts and slender arms' twin chains.
So would I beg you, if I only may,
To see such sights as I before have seen,
Because my fetish pleases me. Obscene?
I'll be obsessed until my dying day
By your sweet smiling mouth and eyes, bright gray,
Your ample breasts and slender arms' twin chains!
Le Primtemps (“Spring” or “Springtime”)
by Charles d'Orleans
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
struck from coal.
What is their brazen goal?
They grab at whatever passes,
so we can only hazard guesses.
But they rear like prancing steeds
raked by brilliant spurs of need,
Young lovers.
The text of the original French poem can be found here.
Winter has cast his cloak away
by Charles d'Orleans
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
Winter has cast his cloak away
of wind and cold and chilling rain
to dress in embroidered light again:
the light of day—bright, festive, gay!
Each bird and beast, without delay,
in its own tongue, sings this refrain:
"Winter has cast his cloak away!"
Brooks, fountains, rivers, streams at play,
wear, with their summer livery,
bright beads of silver jewelry.
All the Earth has a new and fresh display:
Winter has cast his cloak away!
Note: This rondeau was set to music by Debussy in his Trois chansons de France.
The year lays down his mantle cold
by Charles d'Orleans
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
The year lays down his mantle cold
of wind, chill rain and bitter air,
and now goes clad in clothes of gold
of smiling suns and seasons fair,
while birds and beasts of wood and fold
now with each cry and song declare:
"The year lays down his mantle cold!"
All brooks, springs, rivers, seaward rolled,
now pleasant summer livery wear
with silver beads embroidered where
the world puts off its raiment old.
The year lays down his mantle cold.
The First Valentine
Charles d’Orleans (1394-1465), a French royal, the grandchild of Charles V, and the Duke of Orleans, has been credited with writing the first Valentine card, in the form of a poem for his wife. Charles wrote the poem in 1415 at age 21, in the first year of his captivity while being held prisoner in the Tower of London after having been captured by the British at the Battle of Agincourt.
My Very Gentle Valentine
by Charles d’Orleans
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My very gentle Valentine,
Alas, for me you were born too soon,
As I was born too late for you!
May God forgive my jailer
Who has kept me from you this entire year.
I am sick without your love, my dear,
My very gentle Valentine.
CHAUCER (II)
Rondel: “Rejection”
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.
I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has been cast.
I tell you truly, needless now to feign,—
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain.
Alas, that Nature in your face compassed
Such beauty, that no man may hope attain
To mercy, though he perish from the pain;
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.
Rondel: “Escape”
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Since I'm escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.
He may question me and counter this and that;
I care not: I will answer just as I mean.
Since I'm escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean.
Love strikes me from his roster, short and flat,
And he is struck from my books, just as clean,
Forevermore; there is no other mean.
Since I'm escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.
TAGORE (II)
The Seashore Gathering
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
On the seashores of endless worlds, earth's children converge.
The infinite sky is motionless, the restless waters boisterous.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children gather to dance with joyous cries and pirouettes.
They build sand castles and play with hollow shells.
They weave boats out of withered leaves and laughingly float them out over the vast deep.
Earth's children play gaily on the seashores of endless worlds.
They do not know, yet, how to cast nets or swim.
Divers fish for pearls and merchants sail their ships, while earth's children skip, gather pebbles and scatter them again.
They are unaware of hidden treasures, nor do they know how to cast nets, yet.
The sea surges with laughter, smiling palely on the seashore.
Death-dealing waves sing the children meaningless songs, like a mother lullabying her baby's cradle.
The sea plays with the children, smiling palely on the seashore.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children meet.
Tempests roam pathless skies, ships lie wrecked in uncharted waters, death wanders abroad, and still the children play.
On the seashores of endless worlds there is a great gathering of earth's children.
Unfit Gifts
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
At sunrise, I cast my nets into the sea,
dredging up the strangest and most beautiful objects from the depths ...
some radiant like smiles, some glittering like tears, others flushed like brides' cheeks.
When I returned, staggering under their weight, my love was relaxing in her garden, idly tearing leaves from flowers.
Hesitant, I placed all I had produced at her feet, silently awaiting her verdict.
She glanced down disdainfully, then pouted: "What are these bizarre things? I have no use for them!"
I bowed my head, humiliated, and thought:
"Truly, I did not contend for them; I did not purchase them in the marketplace; they are unfit gifts for her!"
That night I flung them, one by one, into the street, like refuse.
The next morning travelers came, picked them up and carted them off to exotic countries.
I Cannot Remember My Mother
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I cannot remember my mother,
yet sometimes in the middle of my playing
a melody seemed to hover over my playthings:
some forgotten tune she loved to sing
while rocking my cradle.
I cannot remember my mother,
yet sometimes on an early autumn morning
the smell of the shiuli flowers fills my room
as the scent of the temple's morning service
wafts over me like my mother's perfume.
I cannot remember my mother,
yet sometimes still, from my bedroom window,
when I lift my eyes to the heavens' vast blue canopy
and sense on my face her serene gaze,
I feel her grace has encompassed the sky.
This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Each morning this dog,
who has become quite attached to me,
sits silently at my feet
until, gently caressing his head,
I acknowledge his company.
This simple recognition gives my companion such joy
he shudders with sheer delight.
Among all languageless creatures
he alone has seen through man entire—
has seen beyond what is good or bad in him
to such a depth he can lay down his life
for the sake of love alone.
Now it is he who shows me the way
through this unfathomable world throbbing with life.
When I see his deep devotion,
his offer of his whole being,
I fail to comprehend ...
How, through sheer instinct,
has he discovered whatever it is that he knows?
With his anxious piteous looks
he cannot communicate his understanding
and yet somehow has succeeded in conveying to me
out of the entire creation
the true loveworthiness of man.
Patience
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
If you refuse to speak, I will fill my heart with your silence and endure it.
I will remain still and wait like the night through its starry vigil
with its head bowed low in patience.
The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish,
and your voice will pour down in golden streams breaking through the heavens.
Then your words will take wing in songs from each of my birds' nests,
and your melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.
Gitanjali 35
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been divided by narrow domestic walls;
Where words emerge from the depths of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not been lost amid the dreary desert sands of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Gitanjali 11
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
Leave this vain chanting and singing and counting of beads:
what Entity do you seek in this lonely dark temple with all the doors shut?
Open your eyes and see: God is not here!
He is out there where the tiller tills the hard ground and the paver breaks stones.
He is with them in sun and shower; his garments are filthy with dust.
Shed your immaculate mantle and like him embrace the dust!
Deliverance? Where is this "deliverance" to be found
when our Master himself has joyfully embraced the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all forever!
Cease your meditations, abandon your petals and incense!
What is the harm if your clothes become stained rags?
Meet him in the toil and the sweat of his brow!
Last Curtain
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
I know the day comes when my eyes close,
when my sight fails,
when life takes its leave in silence
and the last curtain veils my vision.
Yet the stars will still watch by night;
the sun will still rise like before;
the hours will still heave like sea waves
casting up pleasures and pains.
When I consider this end of my earth-life,
the barrier of the moments breaks
and I see by the illumination of death
this world with its careless treasures.
Rare is its lowliest seat,
rare its meanest of lives.
Things I longed for in vain and those I received, let them pass.
Let me but truly possess the things I rejected and overlooked.
Death
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
You who are the final fulfillment of life,
Death, my Death, come and whisper to me!
Day after day I have kept watch for you;
for you I have borne the joys and the pangs of life.
All that I am, all that I have and hope, and all my love
have always flowed toward you in the depths of secrecy.
One final glance from your eyes and my life will be yours forever, your own.
The flowers have been woven and the garland prepared for the bridegroom.
After the wedding the bride must leave her home and meet her lord alone in the solitude of night.
RILKE (II)
Du im Voraus (“You who never arrived”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You who never arrived in my arms, my Belovéd,
lost before love began...
How can I possibly know which songs might please you?
I have given up trying to envision you
in portentous moments before the next wave impacts...
when all the vastness and immenseness within me,
all the far-off undiscovered lands and landscapes,
all the cities, towers and bridges,
all the unanticipated twists and turns in the road,
and all those terrible terrains once traversed by strange gods—
engender new meaning in me:
your meaning, my enigmatic darling...
You, who continually elude me.
You, my Belovéd,
who are every garden I ever gazed upon,
longingly, through some country manor’s open window,
so that you almost stepped out, pensively, to meet me;
who are every sidestreet I ever chanced upon,
even though you’d just traipsed tantalizingly away, and vanished,
while the disconcerted shopkeepers’ mirrors
still dizzily reflected your image, flashing you back at me,
startled by my unwarranted image!
Who knows, but perhaps the same songbird’s cry
echoed through us both,
yesterday, separate as we were, that evening?
Der Panther ("The Panther")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles, his small orbit tightening,
an electron losing power. Paralyzed,
soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing.
Only at times the pupils' curtains rise
silently, and then an image enters,
descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers
somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.
Komm, Du (“Come, You”)
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.
Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.
This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.
Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.
Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.
Liebes-Lied (“Love Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark
in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate.
There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow
enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice.
Whose instrument are we becoming together?
Whose, the hands that excite us?
Ah, sweet song!
Das Lied des Bettlers (“The Beggar’s Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I live outside your gates,
exposed to the rain, exposed to the sun;
sometimes I’ll cradle my right ear
in my right palm;
then when I speak my voice sounds strange,
alien ...
I'm unsure whose voice I’m hearing:
mine or yours.
I implore a trifle;
the poets cry for more.
Sometimes I cover both eyes
and my face disappears;
there it lies heavy in my hands
looking peaceful, instead,
so that no one would ever think
I have no place to lay my head.
Translator's note: I believe the last line may be a reference to a statement made by Jesus Christ in the gospels: that foxes have their dens, but he had no place to lay his head. Rilke may also have had in mind Jesus saying that what someone does "to the least of these" they would also be doing to him.
This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.
First Elegy
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!
And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...
But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!
Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)
When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.
Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.
But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"
Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?
Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.
Voices! Voices!
Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.
Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!
But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.
Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.
Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.
How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.
The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.
Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.
In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ breasts.
But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?
Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?
Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,
one of the soul’s lethal raptors, well aware of your nature.
As in the days of Tobias, when one of you, obscuring his radiance,
stood at the simple threshold, appearing ordinary rather than appalling
while the curious youth peered through the window.
But if the Archangel emerged today, perilous, from beyond the stars
and took even one step toward us, our hammering hearts
would pound us to death. What are you?
Who are you? Joyous from the beginning;
God’s early successes; Creation’s favorites;
creatures of the heights; pollen of the flowering godhead; cusps of pure light;
stately corridors; rising stairways; exalted thrones;
filling space with your pure essence; crests of rapture;
shields of ecstasy; storms of tumultuous emotions whipped into whirlwinds ...
until one, acting alone, recreates itself by mirroring the beauty of its own countenance.
While we, when deeply moved, evaporate;
we exhale ourselves and fade away, growing faint like smoldering embers;
we drift away like the scent of smoke.
And while someone might say: “You’re in my blood! You occupy this room!
You fill this entire springtime!” ... Still, what becomes of us?
We cannot be contained; we vanish whether inside or out.
And even the loveliest, who can retain them?
Resemblance ceaselessly rises, then is gone, like dew from dawn’s grasses.
And what is ours drifts away, like warmth from a steaming dish.
O smile, where are you bound?
O heavenward glance: are you a receding heat wave, a ripple of the heart?
Alas, but is this not what we are?
Does the cosmos we dissolve into savor us?
Do the angels reabsorb only the radiance they emitted themselves,
or sometimes, perhaps by oversight, traces of our being as well?
Are we included in their features, as obscure as the vague looks on the faces of pregnant women?
Do they notice us at all (how could they) as they reform themselves?
Lovers, if they only knew how, might mutter marvelous curses into the night air.
For it seems everything eludes us.
See: the trees really do exist; our houses stand solid and firm.
And yet we drift away, like weightless sighs.
And all creation conspires to remain silent about us: perhaps from shame, perhaps some inexpressible hope?
Lovers, gratified by each other, I ask to you consider:
You cling to each other, but where is your proof of a connection?
Sometimes my hands become aware of each other
and my time-worn, exhausted face takes shelter in them,
creating a slight sensation.
But because of that, can I still claim to be?
You, the ones who writhe with each other’s passions
until, overwhelmed, someone begs: “No more!...”;
You who swell beneath each other’s hands like autumn grapes;
You, the one who dwindles as the other increases:
I ask you to consider ...
I know you touch each other so ardently because each caress preserves pure continuance,
like the promise of eternity, because the flesh touched does not disappear.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of initial intimacy,
the first lonely vigil at the window, the first walk together through the blossoming garden:
lovers, do you not still remain who you were before?
If you lift your lips to each other’s and unite, potion to potion,
still how strangely each drinker eludes the magic.
Weren’t you confounded by the cautious human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Weren’t love and farewell laid so lightly on shoulders they seemed composed of some ethereal substance unknown to us today?
Consider those hands, how weightlessly they rested, despite the powerful torsos.
The ancient masters knew: “We can only go so far, in touching each other. The gods can exert more force. But that is their affair.”
If only we, too, could discover such a pure, contained Eden for humanity,
our own fruitful strip of soil between river and rock.
For our hearts have always exceeded us, as our ancestors’ did.
And we can no longer trust our own eyes, when gazing at godlike bodies, our hearts find a greater repose.
PAVLOVA (II)
I test the tightrope,
balanced by a child
in each arm.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Winter―a beast.
Spring―a bud.
Summer―a bug.
Autumn―a bird.
Otherwise I'm a woman.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Immortalize me!
With your bare, warm palm
please sculpt and mold my malleable snow.
Polish me until I glow.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
God saw
it was good.
Adam saw
it was impressive.
Eve saw
it was improvable.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Scales:
on the one hand joy;
on the other sorrow.
Sorrow is weightier;
therefore joy
elevates.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
A muse inspires when she arrives,
a wife when she departs,
a mistress when she’s absent.
Would you like me to manage all that simultaneously?
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You, my dear, are my shielding stone:
to sing behind, or bash my head on.
―by Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Remember me as I am this instant: abrupt and absent,
my words fluttering like moths trapped in a curtain.
―by Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I have been dropped
and fell from such
immense heights
for so long that
perhaps I still
have enough
time to learn
how to
fly.
―by Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
OLD ENGLISH AND MIDDLE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS
This is a splendid little poem that may predate Chaucer. Please note the introduction of end rhyme ...
Westron Wynde
(anonymous Middle English lyric, found in a partbook circa 1530 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Western wind, when will you blow,
bringing the drizzling rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
and I in my bed again!
NOTE: The original poem has "the smalle rayne down can rayne" which suggests a drizzle or mist, either of which would suggest a dismal day.
Now skruketh rose and lylie flour
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 11th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Now the rose and the lily skyward flower,
That will bear for awhile that sweet savor:
In summer, that sweet tide;
There is no queen so stark in her power
Nor any lady so bright in her bower
That dead shall not summon and guide;
But whoever forgoes lust, in heavenly bliss will abide
With his thoughts on Jesus anon, thralled at his side.
A similar poem to the one above, in time and language, is "Blow Northerne Wynd," which has been called the "most ancient love poem in the English language," perhaps composed during the reign of King John. But I prefer the lovely poem above, if not the Christian sentiments of the closing couplet.
"Sumer is icumen in" (also known as the "Summer Canon" and the "Cuckoo Song") is a medieval English round, or rota, or rondel, of the mid-13th century. "Rondel" means round or circular. The title translates approximately to "Summer Has Come In" or "Summer Has Arrived." The song was apparently composed in the Wessex dialect of Middle English and came complete with a musical score and instructions for the singing of rounds, in Latin, making it also a rondellus. Many scholars believe the "Cuckoo Song," one of the earliest English lyrics about the coming of spring and summer, was probably composed between 1240 and 1310, although some think it may date back earlier, to the 12th century. It was written down in a commonplace book kept over a number of years by the monks of Reading Abbey. The rondel is preceded by two lines that ask or command the cuckoo to sing (the first two lines below).
Sumer is icumen in
anonymous Middle English poem, circa 1260 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Sing now cuckoo! Sing, cuckoo!
Sing, cuckoo! Sing now cuckoo!
Summer is a-comin'!
Sing loud, cuckoo!
The seed grows,
The meadow blows,
The woods spring up anew.
Sing, cuckoo!
The ewe bleats for her lamb;
The cows contentedly moo;
The bullock roots;
The billy-goat poots ...
Sing merrily, cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo,
You sing so well, cuckoo!
Never stop, until you're through!
Sumer is icumen in
a modern English interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing achu!
Groweth sed
And bloweth hed
And buyeth med?
Cuccu!
Adam Lay Ybounden
(anonymous Medieval English lyric, circa early 15th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Adam lay bound, bound in a bond;
Four thousand winters, he thought, were not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took,
As clerics now find written in their book.
But had the apple not been taken, or had it never been,
We'd never have had our Lady, heaven's queen and matron.
So blesséd be the time the apple was taken thus;
Therefore we sing, "God is gracious!"
The poem has also been rendered as "Adam lay i-bounden" and "Adam lay i-bowndyn."
I Sing of a Maiden
(anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I sing of a maiden
That is matchless.
The King of all Kings
For her son she chose.
He came also as still
To his mother's breast
As April dew
Falling on the grass.
He came also as still
To his mother's bower
As April dew
Falling on the flower.
He came also as still
To where his mother lay
As April dew
Falling on the spray.
Mother and maiden?
Never one, but she!
Well may such a lady
God's mother be!
Whan the turuf is thy tour
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
1.
When the turf is your tower
and the pit is your bower,
your pale white skin and throat
shall be sullen worms' to grope.
What help unto you, then,
was all your worldly hope?
2.
When the turf is your tower
and the grave is your bower,
your pale white throat and skin
consumed by worms within ...
what hope of my help then?
Ech day me comëth tydinges thre
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Each day I'm plagued by three doles,
These gargantuan weights on my soul:
First, that I must somehow exit this fen.
Second, because I cannot know when.
And yet it's the third that torments me so,
Having no way to know where the hell I will go!
Ich have y-don al myn youth
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I have done it all my youth:
Often, often, and often!
I have loved long and yearned zealously…
And oh what grief it has brought me!
Brut (circa 1100 AD, written by Layamon, an excerpt)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Now he stands on a hill overlooking the Avon,
seeing steel fishes girded with swords in the stream,
their swimming days done,
their scales a-gleam like gold-plated shields,
their fish-spines floating like shattered spears.
Layamon's Brut is a 32,000-line poem composed in Middle English that shows a strong Anglo-Saxon influence and contains the first known reference to King Arthur in English. The passage above is a good example of Layamon's gift for imagery. It's interesting, I think, that a thousand years ago a poet was dabbling in surrealism, with dead warriors being described as if they were both men and fish.
A Proverb from Winfred's Time
anonymous Old English poem, circa 757-786
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
1.
The procrastinator puts off purpose,
never initiates anything marvelous,
never succeeds, and dies alone.
2.
The late-deed-doer delays glory-striving,
never indulges daring dreams,
never succeeds, and dies alone.
3.
Often the deed-dodger avoids ventures,
never succeeds, and dies alone.
Winfrid or Wynfrith is better known as Saint Boniface (c. 675–754). The poem might better be titled "A Proverb Against Procrastination from Winfred's Time." This may be the second-oldest English poem, after "Caedmon's Hymn."
Franks Casket Runes
anonymous Old English poems, circa 700
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The fish flooded the shore-cliffs;
the sea-king wept when he swam onto the shingle:
whale's bone.
Romulus and Remus, twin brothers weaned in Rome
by a she-wolf, far from their native land.
"The Leiden Riddle" is an Old English translation of Aldhelm's Latin riddle Lorica ("Corselet").
The Leiden Riddle
anonymous Old English riddle poem, circa 700
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The dank earth birthed me from her icy womb.
I know I was not fashioned from woolen fleeces;
nor was I skillfully spun from skeins;
I have neither warp nor weft;
no thread thrums through me in the thrashing loom;
nor do whirring shuttles rattle me;
nor does the weaver's rod assail me;
nor did silkworms spin me like skillfull fates
into curious golden embroidery.
And yet heroes still call me an excellent coat.
Nor do I fear the dread arrows' flights,
however eagerly they leap from their quivers.
Solution: a coat of mail.
If you see a busker singing for tips, you are seeing someone carrying on an Anglo-Saxon tradition that goes back to the days of Beowulf ...
He sits with his harp at his thane's feet,
Earning his hire, his rewards of rings,
Sweeping the strings with his skillful nail;
Hall-thanes smile at the sweet song he sings.
—"Fortunes of Men" loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Fairest Between Lincoln and Lindsey
(anonymous Middle English poem, circa late 13th century)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
When the nightingale sings, the woods turn green;
Leaf and grass again blossom in April, I know,
Yet love pierces my heart with its spear so keen!
Night and day it drinks my blood. The painful rivulets flow.
I’ve loved all this year. Now I can love no more;
I’ve sighed many a sigh, sweetheart, and yet all seems wrong.
For love is no nearer and that leaves me poor.
Sweet lover, think of me — I’ve loved you so long!
A cleric courts his lady
(anonymous Middle English poem, circa late 13th century)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My death I love, my life I hate, because of a lovely lady;
She's as bright as the broad daylight, and shines on me so purely.
I fade before her like a leaf in summer when it's green.
If thinking of her does no good, to whom shall I complain?
“Whoso List to Hunt” is a famous, very early English sonnet written by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) in the mid-16th century. The poem was first published in a 1557 anthology entitled Songes and Sonettes Written by the Ryght Honorable Lord Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, and others. The anthology was published in London by Richard Tottel and is better known today as Tottel's Miscellany. This was the modern English language's first printed poetry anthology, and thus a ground-breaking work of literature. Wyatt's poem, which has an alternate title, “The Lover Despairing to Attain Unto His Lady’s Grace Relinquisheth the Pursuit,” is commonly believed to have been written for Anne Boleyn, who married King Henry VIII only to be beheaded at his command when she failed to produce a male heir. (Ouch, talk about male chauvinism!) Here is my attempt at a modernization of the poem:
Whoever Longs to Hunt
by Sir Thomas Wyatt
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
Whoever longs to hunt, I know the deer;
but as for me, alas!, I may no more.
This vain pursuit has left me so bone-sore
I'm one of those who falters, at the rear.
Yet friend, how can I draw my anguished mind
away from the doe?
Thus, as she flees before
me, fainting I follow.
I must leave off, therefore,
since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Whoever seeks her out,
I relieve of any doubt,
that he, like me, must spend his time in vain.
For graven with diamonds, set in letters plain,
these words appear, her fair neck ringed about:
Touch me not, for Caesar's I am,
And wild to hold, though I seem tame.
Are the next poems the oldest rhyming poems in the English language? Reginald of Durham recorded four Anglo-Saxon/Old English verses of Saint Godric's: they are the oldest songs in English for which the original musical settings survive.
The first song is said in the Life of Saint Godric to have come to Godric when he had a vision of his sister Burhcwen, like him a solitary at Finchale, being received into heaven. She was singing a song of thanksgiving, in Latin, and Godric renders her song in English bracketed by a Kyrie eleison:
Led By Christ and Mary
by Saint Godric of Finchale (1065-1170)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
By Christ and Saint Mary I was so graciously led
that the earth never felt my bare foot’s tread!
In the second poem, Godric puns on his name: godes riche means “God’s kingdom” and sounds like “God is rich” ...
A Cry to Mary
by Saint Godric of Finchale (1065-1170)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I.
Saintë Marië Virginë,
Mother of Jesus Christ the Nazarenë,
Welcome, shield and help thin Godric,
Fly him off to God’s kingdom rich!
II.
Saintë Marië, Christ’s bower,
Virgin among Maidens, Motherhood’s flower,
Blot out my sin, fix where I’m flawed,
Elevate me to Bliss with God!
Godric also wrote a prayer to St. Nicholas:
Prayer to St. Nicholas
by Saint Godric of Finchale (1065-1170)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Saint Nicholas, beloved of God,
Build us a house that’s bright and fair;
Watch over us from birth to bier,
Then, Saint Nicholas, bring us safely there!
"The Rhyming Poem" also known as "The Riming Poem" and "The Rhymed Poem" is perhaps the oldest English rhyming poem. It was included in the Exeter Book, which has been dated to circa 960-990 AD. However the poem may be older than the collection in which it was discovered.
The Rhymed Poem aka The Rhyming Poem and The Riming Poem
anonymous Old English/Anglo-Saxon poem from the Exeter Book, circa 990 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
He who granted me life created this sun
and graciously provided its radiant engine.
I was gladdened with glees, bathed in bright hues,
deluged with joy’s blossoms, sunshine-infused.
Men admired me, feted me with banquet-courses;
we rejoiced in the good life. Gaily bedecked horses
carried me swiftly across plains on joyful rides,
delighting me with their long limbs' thunderous strides.
That world was quickened by earth’s fruits and their flavors!
I cantered under pleasant skies, attended by troops of advisers.
Guests came and went, amusing me with their chatter
as I listened with delight to their witty palaver.
Well-appointed ships glided by in the distance;
when I sailed myself, I was never without guidance.
I was of the highest rank; I lacked for nothing in the hall;
nor did I lack for brave companions; warriors, all,
we strode through castle halls weighed down with gold
won from our service to thanes. We were proud men, and bold.
Wise men praised me; I was omnipotent in battle;
Fate smiled on and protected me; foes fled before me like cattle.
Thus I lived with joy indwelling; faithful retainers surrounded me;
I possessed vast estates; I commanded all my eyes could see;
the earth lay subdued before me; I sat on a princely throne;
the words I sang were charmed; old friendships did not wane ...
Those were years rich in gifts and the sounds of happy harp-strings,
when a lasting peace dammed shut the rivers’ sorrowings.
My servants were keen, their harps resonant;
their songs pealed, the sound loud but pleasant;
the music they made melodious, a continual delight;
the castle hall trembled and towered bright.
Courage increased, wealth waxed with my talent;
I gave wise counsel to great lords and enriched the valiant.
My spirit enlarged; my heart rejoiced;
good faith flourished; glory abounded; abundance increased.
I was lavishly supplied with gold; bright gems were circulated ...
Till treasure led to treachery and the bonds of friendship constricted.
I was bold in my bright array, noble in my equipage,
my joy princely, my home a happy hermitage.
I protected and led my people;
for many years my life among them was regal;
I was devoted to them and they to me.
But now my heart is troubled, fearful of the fates I see;
disaster seems unavoidable. Someone dear departs in flight by night
who once before was bold. His soul has lost its light.
A secret disease in full growth blooms within his breast,
spreads in different directions. Hostility blossoms in his chest,
in his mind. Bottomless grief assaults the mind's nature
and when penned in, erupts in rupture,
burns eagerly for calamity, runs bitterly about.
The weary man suffers, begins a journey into doubt;
his pain is ceaseless; pain increases his sorrows, destroys his bliss;
his glory ceases; he loses his happiness;
he loses his craft; he no longer burns with desires.
Thus joys here perish, lordships expire;
men lose faith and descend into vice;
infirm faith degenerates into evil’s curse;
faith feebly abandons its high seat and every hour grows worse.
So now the world changes; Fate leaves men lame;
Death pursues hatred and brings men to shame.
The happy clan perishes; the spear rends the marrow;
the evildoer brawls and poisons the arrow;
sorrow devours the city; old age castrates courage;
misery flourishes; wrath desecrates the peerage;
the abyss of sin widens; the treacherous path snakes;
resentment burrows, digs in, wrinkles, engraves;
artificial beauty grows foul;
the summer heat cools;
earthly wealth fails;
enmity rages, cruel, bold;
the might of the world ages, courage grows cold.
Fate wove itself for me and my sentence was given:
that I should dig a grave and seek that grim cavern
men cannot avoid when death comes, arrow-swift,
to seize their lives in his inevitable grasp.
Now night comes at last,
and the way stand clear
for Death to dispossesses me of my my abode here.
When my corpse lies interred and the worms eat my limbs,
whom will Death delight then, with his dark feast and hymns?
Let men’s bones become one,
and then finally, none,
till there’s nothing left here of the evil ones.
But men of good faith will not be destroyed;
the good man will rise, far beyond the Void,
who chastened himself, more often than not,
to avoid bitter sins and that final black Blot.
The good man has hope of a far better end
and remembers the promise of Heaven,
where he’ll experience the mercies of God for his saints,
freed from all sins, dark and depraved,
defended from vices, gloriously saved,
where, happy at last before their cheerful Lord,
men may rejoice in his love forevermore.
EPIGRAMS
My objective is not to side with the majority, but to avoid the ranks of the insane.—Marcus Aurelius, translation by Michael R. Burch
Thought is a bird of unbounded space, which in a cage of words may unfold its wings but cannot fly. — Khalil Gibran, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Cunt, while you weep and seep neediness all night,
ass has claimed what would bring you delight.
—Musa Lapidaria, #100A, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
'How Long the Night' is one of the best rhyming middle English lyrics ever written, and this modern English translation restores the timeless sense of grief and regret it once had. Poems such as this one set the standard for all poetry.
How Long the Night
It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song ...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast—
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Geoffrey Chaucer is a real hoot. I love his work.