Poem of the Day:
- Thread starter stlukesguild
- Start date
stlukesguild
Well-known member
- Messages
- 2,771
A Venetian Lady's Last Will -Paul Valéry
The serene ceremony of the moon
Seals the bliss of rest.
Goethe: Faust, Part II
The day I die, haste to my gondola,
fill it with pinks, roses, and jasmine,
Lay me on the flowers, fold my pale hands
Leave my eyes open like an idol's eyes...
Lay on my brow, pure white as milk
A green diadem of leaves interwound,
Seal with a kissmy frozen lips,
And cover my body with a violet crepe.
When you have finished this weary task,
Oh, gaze at how white I am among the flowers...
Gaze, gaze... then without sighs or tears,
Launch me out to sea on an evening of full moon.
... Away the gondola goes... away among the waves...
Sing, yonder, sing! I can hear you still!
Ah, the sweet carols that space consumes...
How slow the strains of harmony! ... Your songs are sobbings!
Adieu! I make my way cold and dead on the wave
The water lulls me and the moon silvers my beauty.
The Gondola advances until immensity
Slowly enfolds me, profound and ever more blue.
-translated by David Paul
The serene ceremony of the moon
Seals the bliss of rest.
Goethe: Faust, Part II
The day I die, haste to my gondola,
fill it with pinks, roses, and jasmine,
Lay me on the flowers, fold my pale hands
Leave my eyes open like an idol's eyes...
Lay on my brow, pure white as milk
A green diadem of leaves interwound,
Seal with a kissmy frozen lips,
And cover my body with a violet crepe.
When you have finished this weary task,
Oh, gaze at how white I am among the flowers...
Gaze, gaze... then without sighs or tears,
Launch me out to sea on an evening of full moon.
... Away the gondola goes... away among the waves...
Sing, yonder, sing! I can hear you still!
Ah, the sweet carols that space consumes...
How slow the strains of harmony! ... Your songs are sobbings!
Adieu! I make my way cold and dead on the wave
The water lulls me and the moon silvers my beauty.
The Gondola advances until immensity
Slowly enfolds me, profound and ever more blue.
-translated by David Paul
Maybenartist
Well-known member
- Messages
- 553
Langston Hughes - Winold Reiss.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Maybenartist
Well-known member
- Messages
- 553
Sorry sno, I only saw the last page and later when I realised there were other pages I saw you had posted the same.
Could you please delete the duplicate Arty?
Could you please delete the duplicate Arty?
stlukesguild
Well-known member
- Messages
- 2,771
-Ibn Safr al-Marìnì -Night of Love
When the sun bowed low
Before leaving us
I made her promise to visit me
Like another sun
The moment the moon
Started its nocturnal voyage.
And she came like bright dawn
Opening a path through the night
Or like the wind
Skimming the surface of the river.
The horizon all around me
Breathed out perfume
Announcing her arrival
As the fragrance preceded the flower.
I went over the traces
Of her steps with my kisses
As the reader goes over
The letters of a line.
While night slept,
Love was kept awake
By her reed-waist, dune hips
And face beautiful as the moon.
Part of the night I spent
Embracing her
And part kissing her
Until the banner of dawn
Summoned us to leave
And our circle of embraces was broken.
Oh, fateful night!
Hold back the hour of sundering!
-Ibn Safr al-Marìnì from Poemas Arábigoandaluces
The Poemas Arábigoandaluces (Poems of Arab Andalisia) come from the astonishing 10th-13th century civilization of Andalusia, Spain. They are based on the codex of Ibn Sa’id, who wanted a collection of poems "whose idea is more subtle than the West Wind, and whose language is more beautiful than a fair face." These poems would have a profound impact upon Modernist Spanish poets, including Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Jorge Guíllen, Miguel Hernández, and Federigo García Lorca.
When the sun bowed low
Before leaving us
I made her promise to visit me
Like another sun
The moment the moon
Started its nocturnal voyage.
And she came like bright dawn
Opening a path through the night
Or like the wind
Skimming the surface of the river.
The horizon all around me
Breathed out perfume
Announcing her arrival
As the fragrance preceded the flower.
I went over the traces
Of her steps with my kisses
As the reader goes over
The letters of a line.
While night slept,
Love was kept awake
By her reed-waist, dune hips
And face beautiful as the moon.
Part of the night I spent
Embracing her
And part kissing her
Until the banner of dawn
Summoned us to leave
And our circle of embraces was broken.
Oh, fateful night!
Hold back the hour of sundering!
-Ibn Safr al-Marìnì from Poemas Arábigoandaluces
The Poemas Arábigoandaluces (Poems of Arab Andalisia) come from the astonishing 10th-13th century civilization of Andalusia, Spain. They are based on the codex of Ibn Sa’id, who wanted a collection of poems "whose idea is more subtle than the West Wind, and whose language is more beautiful than a fair face." These poems would have a profound impact upon Modernist Spanish poets, including Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Jorge Guíllen, Miguel Hernández, and Federigo García Lorca.
Maybenartist
Well-known member
- Messages
- 553
Wonderful St Luke's. The tempo of the words remind me of Dante.
More precisely, Dante's La Vita Nuova.
More precisely, Dante's La Vita Nuova.
OliveOyl
Well-known member
- Messages
- 303
KA ‘BA, Amiri Baraka, 1972
A closed window looks down on a dirty courtyard,
and black people call across or scream across or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will.
Our world is full of sound.
Our world is more lovely than anyone’s tho we suffer,
and kill each other and sometimes fail to walk the air.
We are beautiful people with African imaginations full of mask and dances and swelling chants with African eyes and noses and arms though we sprawl in gray chains in a place full of winters,
when what we want is sun.
We have been captured, brothers.
And we labor to make our getaway,
into the ancient image,
into a new correspondence with ourselves and our black family.
We need magic now we need the spells,
to raise up return, destroy, and create.
What will be the sacred words????
Amiri Baraka's Legacy Both Controversial And Achingly Beautiful
A closed window looks down on a dirty courtyard,
and black people call across or scream across or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will.
Our world is full of sound.
Our world is more lovely than anyone’s tho we suffer,
and kill each other and sometimes fail to walk the air.
We are beautiful people with African imaginations full of mask and dances and swelling chants with African eyes and noses and arms though we sprawl in gray chains in a place full of winters,
when what we want is sun.
We have been captured, brothers.
And we labor to make our getaway,
into the ancient image,
into a new correspondence with ourselves and our black family.
We need magic now we need the spells,
to raise up return, destroy, and create.
What will be the sacred words????
Amiri Baraka's Legacy Both Controversial And Achingly Beautiful
musket
Well-known member
- Messages
- 1,031
Last night I dreamed I was back home again,
And was looking at my wife weaving.
She stopped the loom, and seemed deep in thought,
And as though she had not the strength to start again.
I called to her and she looked up at me,
But did not recognize me, and stared vacantly.
The years are many since we parted,
And my hair is not the color it used to be.
~Hanshan
(translation R.H. Blyth)
And was looking at my wife weaving.
She stopped the loom, and seemed deep in thought,
And as though she had not the strength to start again.
I called to her and she looked up at me,
But did not recognize me, and stared vacantly.
The years are many since we parted,
And my hair is not the color it used to be.
~Hanshan
(translation R.H. Blyth)
musket
Well-known member
- Messages
- 1,031
Another, more obvious translation of Issa.
A world of dew,
And within every dewdrop
A world of struggle.
We are as transient as the dewdrops, and vanish like them, leaving no trace behind. But our struggles are nonetheless real. Issa's life was marked by tragedy. His firstborn son died at age one. His firstborn daughter died at two and a half, which prompted him to write this haiku.
A world of dew,
And within every dewdrop
A world of struggle.
We are as transient as the dewdrops, and vanish like them, leaving no trace behind. But our struggles are nonetheless real. Issa's life was marked by tragedy. His firstborn son died at age one. His firstborn daughter died at two and a half, which prompted him to write this haiku.
- Messages
- 8,606
How sad, but I like this translation better.
stlukesguild
Well-known member
- Messages
- 2,771
Ferdowsi - Shahnameh (excerpts from The Tale of Zal and Rudabeh)
There's a princess in Mehrab's palace who in finer by far than your king. Her stature is like a teak tree's, her flesh is that of ivory, and she wears on her head the crown of musk that God has given her. Her eyes are like two dark narcissi, her eyebrows are like a bow, her nose is like a silver reed, her mouth is small, like the contracted heart of a desperate man, and her hair falls in ringlets to her feet. Her mouth is so tiny that her breath can scarcely find passage there, and there is no one in all the world who is her equal for beauty. We have come here so that her ruby lips can become acquainted with the lips of Sam's son...
Zal questioned them about their mistress, asking about her stature and beauty, her manner of speaking and wisdom... "Tell me everything," he said...
One of them said... there is Rudabeh, whose face is like the moon, whose body is a silver cypress tree adorned in tints and scents; she is a rose, a jasmine flower, from head to foot, and her face is as radiant as Canopus shining above Yemen. From the silver dome of her forehead her hair cascades in fragrant coils, looped with rubies and emeralds, down to her feet her curls are links of musk entwined one with another, her ten fingers are silver reeds seeped in civet. You will see no idol as beautiful as she in all of China; the moon and the Pleiades bow down before her...
Rudabeh's palace was as pleasant as springtime... She had one of its rooms decorated with Chinese brocade, and she placed golden trays heaped with agates and emeralds there. Then she mixed wine, musk, and ambergris together and decorated the area with violets, narcissi, the blossoms of the Judas tree, branches of jasmine, and hyacinths. The drinking vessels were of gold set with turquoise, and held rose water. Rudabeh's face was a radiant as the sun, and the scents in her room rose up to the sun's sphere...
... she loosened her hair, which cascaded down, tumbling like snakes, loop upon loop. She said, "Come, take these black locks which I let down for you, and use them to climb up to me."
Zal quickly climbed up... As he stepped onto the roof, Rudabeh made here obeisance before him, then grasped his hands in hers. As if they were in a drunken stupor, they clasped hands and descended from the roof into Rudabeh's golden chamber, which glowed like paradise.
From moment then to moment their desire
Gained strength, and wisdom fled before love's fire;
Passion engulfed them, and these lovers lay
Entwined together til the break of day.
So tightly they embraced, before Zal left'
Zal was the warp, and Rudabeh the weft
Of one cloth, as with tears they said goodbye
And cursed the sun for rising in the sky...
tr. Dick Davis
Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi ( ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی; c. 940-1020) was a Persian poet and the author of the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings)
and celebrated as the most influential figure in Persian literature and one of the greatest in the literature. The Shahnameh is revered to this day as the national epic of Persia, often honored in Iran (and other Persian-speaking regions) as a literary masterwork even above the Qur'an. The poem stands with Homer's Iliad & Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Dante's Comedia as one of the greatest epic poems. Unlike the Odyssey or Aeneid which relate narratives involving a few main characters, The Shahnameh is closer to Dante's Comedia or The Arabian Nights in collecting narratives of a great many characters. Like the Hebrew Bible, the Shahnameh makes an attempt to collect the history and mythology of a once great defeated people: the Persian Empire prior to their conquest by the Islamic Arabs in the 7th century.
The narrative of the lovers, Zal and Rudabeh is one of the central and most beloved tales of the Shahnameh.
The Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems. There are few if any complete translations into English. Dick Davis' version, among the most respected, translated the text employing a combination of poetic prose and poetry. At nearly 900 pages, it is still but only a fragment of the entire poem.
There's a princess in Mehrab's palace who in finer by far than your king. Her stature is like a teak tree's, her flesh is that of ivory, and she wears on her head the crown of musk that God has given her. Her eyes are like two dark narcissi, her eyebrows are like a bow, her nose is like a silver reed, her mouth is small, like the contracted heart of a desperate man, and her hair falls in ringlets to her feet. Her mouth is so tiny that her breath can scarcely find passage there, and there is no one in all the world who is her equal for beauty. We have come here so that her ruby lips can become acquainted with the lips of Sam's son...
Zal questioned them about their mistress, asking about her stature and beauty, her manner of speaking and wisdom... "Tell me everything," he said...
One of them said... there is Rudabeh, whose face is like the moon, whose body is a silver cypress tree adorned in tints and scents; she is a rose, a jasmine flower, from head to foot, and her face is as radiant as Canopus shining above Yemen. From the silver dome of her forehead her hair cascades in fragrant coils, looped with rubies and emeralds, down to her feet her curls are links of musk entwined one with another, her ten fingers are silver reeds seeped in civet. You will see no idol as beautiful as she in all of China; the moon and the Pleiades bow down before her...
Rudabeh's palace was as pleasant as springtime... She had one of its rooms decorated with Chinese brocade, and she placed golden trays heaped with agates and emeralds there. Then she mixed wine, musk, and ambergris together and decorated the area with violets, narcissi, the blossoms of the Judas tree, branches of jasmine, and hyacinths. The drinking vessels were of gold set with turquoise, and held rose water. Rudabeh's face was a radiant as the sun, and the scents in her room rose up to the sun's sphere...
... she loosened her hair, which cascaded down, tumbling like snakes, loop upon loop. She said, "Come, take these black locks which I let down for you, and use them to climb up to me."
Zal quickly climbed up... As he stepped onto the roof, Rudabeh made here obeisance before him, then grasped his hands in hers. As if they were in a drunken stupor, they clasped hands and descended from the roof into Rudabeh's golden chamber, which glowed like paradise.
From moment then to moment their desire
Gained strength, and wisdom fled before love's fire;
Passion engulfed them, and these lovers lay
Entwined together til the break of day.
So tightly they embraced, before Zal left'
Zal was the warp, and Rudabeh the weft
Of one cloth, as with tears they said goodbye
And cursed the sun for rising in the sky...
tr. Dick Davis
Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi ( ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی; c. 940-1020) was a Persian poet and the author of the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings)
and celebrated as the most influential figure in Persian literature and one of the greatest in the literature. The Shahnameh is revered to this day as the national epic of Persia, often honored in Iran (and other Persian-speaking regions) as a literary masterwork even above the Qur'an. The poem stands with Homer's Iliad & Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Dante's Comedia as one of the greatest epic poems. Unlike the Odyssey or Aeneid which relate narratives involving a few main characters, The Shahnameh is closer to Dante's Comedia or The Arabian Nights in collecting narratives of a great many characters. Like the Hebrew Bible, the Shahnameh makes an attempt to collect the history and mythology of a once great defeated people: the Persian Empire prior to their conquest by the Islamic Arabs in the 7th century.
The narrative of the lovers, Zal and Rudabeh is one of the central and most beloved tales of the Shahnameh.
The Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems. There are few if any complete translations into English. Dick Davis' version, among the most respected, translated the text employing a combination of poetic prose and poetry. At nearly 900 pages, it is still but only a fragment of the entire poem.
musket
Well-known member
- Messages
- 1,031
Well, as long as we're going to do old chestnuts along with more obscure stuff...
I have known her well. And the thing is, she did love me true.
La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats, 1819
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
I have known her well. And the thing is, she did love me true.
La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats, 1819
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
musket
Well-known member
- Messages
- 1,031
In the citadel there is a beautiful lady;
The pearls at her waist tinkle silverly;
Among the flowers she dandles a parrot,
And plays the lute under the moon.
The long tones of her song still linger after three months;
The short dance-- all come to see.
But this will not continue forever;
The lotus flower cannot bear the frost.
~Hanshan
(translation R.H. Blyth)
I'm partial to Hanshan (8th Century). His name means "Cold Mountain."
The pearls at her waist tinkle silverly;
Among the flowers she dandles a parrot,
And plays the lute under the moon.
The long tones of her song still linger after three months;
The short dance-- all come to see.
But this will not continue forever;
The lotus flower cannot bear the frost.
~Hanshan
(translation R.H. Blyth)
I'm partial to Hanshan (8th Century). His name means "Cold Mountain."
