Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Behind Door Number Two



Baloons
by Sylvia Plath

Since Christmas they have lived with us,
Guileless and clear,
Oval soul-animals,

Taking up half the space,
Moving and rubbing on the silk
Invisible air drifts,

Giving a shriek and pop
When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling.
Yellow cathead, blue fish ----
Such queer moons we live with

Instead of dead furniture!
Straw mats, white walls
And these traveling
Globes of thin air, red, green,
Delighting

The heart like wishes or free
Peacocks blessing
Old ground with a feather
Beaten in starry metals.
Your small

Brother is making
His balloon squeak like a cat.
Seeming to see
A funny pink world he might eat on the other side of it,
He bites,

Then sits
Back, fat jug
Contemplating a world clear as water.
A red
Shred in his little fist.

Behind Door Number One



Mad Girl’s Love Song
By Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Tippy-toe


Pe varfuri de degete de la picioare sa nu va trezesc dintre cozonaci am si eu doua propuneri de incercari pentru club.
S-apoi as vrea daca se poate sa mai curga si altii cu poezele pentru viitoarea intalnire care cica sa prognozeaza dupa sesiune. Asa ca lasati textele sa vina la mine!

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Ne dau afara gandacii...


Da, oameni buni, sper sa nu va fie cu banat, dar lunea asta Pitar Moshul se dezinsectizeaza, se otravesc soarecii cu grau rosu, se deodorizeaza gandacii, se scot animalele din subsol din custi...se primeneste menajeria etc.

You know, the usual, deci clubul se amana pe saptamana viitoare, luni 17 Decembrie, la aceeasi ora si in acelasi loc cum v-am obisnuit de data asta cu Heaney-ul de mai jos in dinti si cu the spirit of the season (oh, yes I mean that in more ways than one).
Merry Merry Week, ok?

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Alphabets


Textul pentru data viitoare se prezinta cam asa. Opinions?
Daca nu va place layoutul urat si inghesuit de pe pagina, am uploadat fisierul Word fix aici. (Apasati cu nadejde)

Alphabets

by Seamus Heaney

I

A shadow his father makes with joined hands

And thumbs and fingers nibbles on the wall

Like a rabbit’s head. He understands

He will understand more when he goes to school.


There he draws smoke with chalk the whole first week,

Then draws the forked stick that they call a Y.

This is writing. A swan’s neck and swan’s back

Make the 2 he can see now as well as say.


Two rafters and a cross-tie on the slate

Are the letter some call ah, some call ay.

There are charts, there are headlines, there is a right

Way to hold the pen and a wrong way.


First it is ‘copying out’, and the ‘English’

Marked correct with a little leaning hoe.

Smells of inkwells rise in the classroom hush.

A globe in the window tilts like a coloured O.

II


Declensions sang on a air like a hosanna

As, column after stratified column,

Book one of Elementa Latina,

Marbled and minatory, rose up to him.


For he was fostered next in a stricter school

Named for the patron saint of the oak wood

Where classes switched to the pealing of a bell

And he left the Latin forum for the shade


Of new calligraphy that felt like home.

The letters of this alphabets were trees.

The capitals were orchards in full bloom,

The lines of script like briars coiled in ditches.


Here in her snooded garment and bare feet,

All ringleted in assonance and woodnotes,

The poet’s dream stole over him like sunlight

And passed into the tenebrous thickets.


He learns this other writing. He is the scribe

Who drove a team of quills on his white field.

Round his cell door the blackbirds dart and dab.

Then self-denial, fasting, the pure cold.


By rules that hardened the farther they reached north

He bends to his desk and begins again.

Christ’s sickle has been in the undergrowth.

The script grows bare and Merovingian.

III

The globe has spun. He stands in a wooden O.

He alludes to Shakespeare. He alludes to Graves.

Time has bulldozed the school and school window.

Balers drop bales like printouts where stooked sheaves


Made lambdas on the stubble once at harvest

And the delta face of each potato pit

Was patted straight and moulded against frost.

All gone, with the omega that kept


Watch above each door, the good luck horse-shoe.

Yet shape-note language absolute on air

As Constantine’s sky-lettered IN HOC SIGNO

Can still command him; or the necromancer


Who would hang from the domed ceiling of his house

A figure of the world with colours in it

So that the figure of the universe

And ‘not just single things’ would meet his sight


When he walked abroad. As from his small window

The astronaut sees all he has sprung from,

The risen, aqueous, singular, lucent O

Like a magnified and buoyant ovum –


Or like my own wide pre-reflective stare

All agog at the plasterer on his ladder

Skimming our gable and writing our name there

With his trowel point, letter by strange letter.

Catching up

Intai si-ntai as vrea sa pun Bavarian Gentians de D.H. Lawrence care e primul text talmacit anul asta.


Bavarian Gentians

by D.H. Lawrence

Not every man has gentians in his house

in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark

darkening the daytime, torch-like, with the smoking blueness of Pluto's

gloom,

ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue

down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day

torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,

black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,

giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off

light,

lead me then, lead the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!

let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower

down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness

even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September

to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark

and Persephone herself is but a voice

or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark

of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,

among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on

the lost bride and her groom.

Poftiti, poftiti, boieri dumneavoastra,




Zaboviti o tzara pe meleagul cercului nostru de traduceri si luati aminte la cele ce se toarna pre ceasta pagina! Adicatelea aici, langa chiseaua cu dulceata si cuvintele candel, se vor desfasura textele pentru rumegat si vom infuleca bataturica, ochisor si discutii. Poate-i trage
Plecati urechile si cascati ochisorii ca sa vedeti cam cu ce ne trecem noi o luni pe luna.
Sedeti aci pe lavita, langa foc si slova-zvapaiata.

Mai pe limba omeneasca, blogul aiasta ne va servi frumusel de gazeta de perete cu textele in lucru sau pentru discutii despre alegerea unei victime intru (ras)talmacire cu poll-uri si panglici.
Tot aici o sa anuntam datele intalnirilor care se desfasoara odata pe luna, lunea de la ora 6. Ex-abrupto vine si textul pentru Luni 10 Decembrie.

Asta fuse pentru cei noi, iar pentru initiatii intr-ale Joy-ului care n-au sarit cu traducerea la Bavarian Gentians, v-as ruga cu cerul si pamantul, ba poate chiar si cosmosul si gaurile negre sa fluturati din taste pe grup sau pe adresa mea de mail: mergicuviitura@gmail.com, ca sa va tintuim aici intre pernele blogului.

Tootles,
Meri