Axon: Creative Explorations

 

MAKE IT GOOD AND IT WILL SING TRUE

 

Translation is a tool to fool a king

Into a bloody war where dead men sing

 

Or help a rabbi, priest or mullah to

Murder the infidel for crooning true

 

Or push a UN minister to vote

And be beheaded, hurled into a moat.

 

You see how terrible this weapon is.

You win a case or your career will fizz.

 

A good translation sings or table it.

You are a nightingale or cloud of shit.

 

There is a huge sea of mediocrity

On which poor words relax like limpid tea

 

Yet Rob Fitzgerald swims pentameters

On the Aegean and Homer’s waves are cleaner

 

Than Penelope waiting chaste at her loom.

Odysseus sweeps the suitors with his broom

 

Into the sea. So Ithaca is real

While other muscular versions conceal

 

Clarity and song below a battle scream.

A good poet lets Spanish Lorca beam

 

Andalusian gypsy song into our ear.

We hear the Guardia Civil shooting black fear

 

Into caves where flamenco verse is born

And the new moon in petticoats adorns

 

The mountain and a blue horse likes to gaze

 At would-be matadors whose death no shouting maze

 

Of cheers can halt at five in the afternoon,

At exactly five in fatal afternoon.

 

 

 

GREAT POETS NEED GREAT POET TRANSLATORS

 

Great poets need an Osip Mandelstam

To turn a lion not into Blake’s lamb

 

But into Soviet brutes who kill Osip,

Freezing him in the snows. You can dip

 

Anywhere to translate. If you are good

You paint a Robert Frost in jingling wood

 

Whom you discover in Mongolia.

The world’s a handkerchief, a magnolia

 

Who lives in every tongue if you have skill,

Knowledge and empathy.  So do not kill

 

Your sources with a tango for a waltz.

The Argentine is not Viennese schmaltz.

 

And never fear. The impossible is sweet.

Stay close to impossibility and tweet

 

Your joy with Cossack fury or like a monk

Painting icons in Crete and free of gunk.

 

Then you’re Greco in Toledo in her storm.

The purple planet keeps you wild and warm.

 

 

 

 FIDELITIES

 

The original is not faithful to translation

As Borges says, so zoom high with elation

 

And your version is original, not ham,

A fresh Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

 

Can you read or write Chinese or Koine Greek?

Great if you do. Or stand in a cold creek

 

And understand Heraclitus’s game?

Your foot will never step into the same

 

Stream. Experience the place. Smell doors

And alleys. Talk to fisherman and whores

 

And soon you’ll master Balzac with a crib.

No sin. Dictionaries are mothers who don’t fib

 

But pass rough meanings into your wise eyes.

I am a language freak, but can’t spell “pies”

 

Or “chamber pots” in any tongue I use.

No sweat. I’m faithful to the love Muse

 

Of reference books. They help unselfishly.

And it won’t hurt your freedom if you see

 

The wooden meaning that your genius turns

Into a paradise of singing tale, burns

 

The early mess in your mind to what brave Eve

Discovers when she gains knowledge. Conceive

 

That first day of the world in every line

You transfer from obscurity to fine

 

Bordeaux or coffee at a dawn café

In Rome, wondrously taut, not silly hay

 

Most of the world gobbles. Drink deep your work.

Sappho and Catullus crave the keen quirk

 

And magic of Houdini to bring song

Into our wondrous bastard English tongue.

 

 

 

FRIENDSHIP

 

Translation is a friendship between two

Fine poets. Respect. Don’t kill the one who

 

Composed or who rewrites. When you can chat

With a dead poet you have light and art.

 

Know François Villon’s song in French. No strife,

The cello of his ballad will haunt you for life.

 

To return grace with grace is a secret pact

In translation. Dictionaries help but sack

 

You if they master. You are frozen in snow,

Win no seat in the troika sled of poet to

 

The re-doer and the reader. Have you heard

What Robert Lowell laments? “A poem prepared

 

By a taxidermist is likely to be a stuffed bird!”

The translator writer fights archaism, scared,

 

 

 

 ARCHAISM

 

Talking modern without murdering the past.

Old writers don’t lose quality in modern cast.

 

Modern diction is speech we use today

As past writers used modern in their way,

 

Not stilted. Be verbally just and fresh

like Cycladic island tomatoes in a dish

 

4 millennia ago. Same beauty sweet and slick.

Unless you’re Spenser on an archaic kick

 

Creating Fairie Queenes with dragons and myth

For Tudor patron Queen Elizabeth,

 

Beware of old talk. If  a slave to being

Like past chat,  good luck and count on nothing.

 

 

 

ERROR

 

The punishment for error: Go straight to jail!

You’re free to invent, imitate, turn a pail

 

Into a swimming pool, if you confess

By naming what you do. But what a mess

 

If you make a mistake. You’re on the hot seat.

You are not human. Truce. Maybe you can beat

 

The game by being Icarus misreading sun.

Yeats dining with Madame Blavatsky for fun

 

Though she was mad. To err is human. Just be

Magnificent. And sing whatever melody.

 

 

 

LITERALISM OR LITERARISM 

 

Horace and Jerome draw back from the cage

Of literalism, of word-to-word. Their rage

 

Is for sense and page. They embellish Greek

And Latin from Hebrew letters, tweak

 

Koheleth’s’ “a time for peace” for Joan Baez.

They’re safe in turning prophets into jazz.

 

“A time of peace, a time of war,” but Joan

And Pete Seeger never word-by-word clone

 

Hebrew poems. Even elephants can’t bear

Blundering literalists who would compose square

 

Poems (I’m a scholar. Beware. We’ve no taste.

Elephants, squash song-less verse till it’s paste).

 

Poems locked in prose wins Melville Moby Dick

And marble Latin lends Borges his gaucho shtick.

 

 

 

HOMER’S SEA & HOMAGE TO FIITZGEALD

                                    Robert Fitzgerald  (1910-1985)

 

Sometimes Fitz works for weeks for a few lines.

Irishman from Illinois he plays with Greek epic

In Italy or in a house on Homer’s sea where winter

Storms bash the rocks below in noisy metrics.

He does his first translation at Harvard

of an ode by Horace he doesn’t care for

But he meets Horace. He needs the 200–

Bucks prize money; doesn’t win it, but decides

He likes classics and translates the best. He keeps

To a five-peace prance in Homer and Virgil till one

Can hear their sixes. All that discipline for the ear

Helped the earliest singers to remember.

From Troy to Carthage back to Sicily

Fitz swims easy five-stroking the grape sea.

In describing the way of great Tang poets

The Chinese say they are dancing in chains.

 

 

 

WHOM SHALL WE TRANSLATE?

 

Start from the top. Also lovely to reveal

An obscure poet – so many good ones peal

 

Tower bells of silence. Hopkins for one.

The list goes on. What to do? Sit on your bun,

 

Apply your fingers to the keys, create

The world. It’s there locked in a crate

 

For a masterly genial craft. Conspire

To resurrect or find the new. Soon fire

 

Will toast your guts and light our eyes. Enjoy.

The world is rich in terrorists, but joy

 

For life, not death, will triumph if your pen,

Not sword, prevail. Isaiah is like a violet wren

 

Waking our hope. I hope these clichés serve

To heat your brain. Joie d’etre  and your verve

 

Will bring the bible of our arts to read

As our own verse. You’re Rimbaud in sin bed,

 

Dreaming surreal tugboats in the salt tongue

Of Anglo-Saxon readers. Best friends die young.

 

Comes “Alcools” of Guy Apollinaire

We need your soul like dark Baudelaire.

 

Rumi is waiting for proximity.

The Sufi poet laughs in ecstasy.

 

The art of translatio is carting words

From old days to our Parliament of Birds.

 

Since we descended ignorant from Babel,

Hear the world chanting in diverse babble.

 

Lexical shock renews weary language bones.

Read Sappho or Sor Juana,[1] no more groans.

 

The globe is yours on your doormat. Let her in.

New stars glow, Plato claps, and sunflowers spin.