- Tuxedo Catfish
- Mar 17, 2007
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You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
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I sadly cannot read the original to compare, but I'm fond of this translation of Maximillian Voloshin's "Under Sail," courtesy of Babette Deutsch:
quote:
Five days we have been cruising, nor once have furled
The bellying sails.
Nights have been spent in bays,
In coves and estuaries,
Where a full moon blossomed above the dunes.
By day the wind drives us along the shallow
And lonely sandbanks,
Seething with white foam.
Stayed by the carven rudder,
I watch
From the high prow
The dance of the deck;
The massed seas shimmer, and beyond,
The interlacing rigging frames
The untenanted ocean.
A balked wave's splash,
A taut mast's creak,
A gurgling underneath the prow -
And one still sail...
Behind - the city,
All a red ecstasy
Of spilling flags,
Inflamed with fear and anger,
Chill with rumors,
Quivering with hope,
Tortured by hunger,
Plagues and blood -
City where tardy Spring glides stealthily,
In a lace veil of flowers and acacias.
But here - only the windless, soundless, unplumbed deep.
The sky, the water, are two valves
Of a vast pearl shell.
The sun is caught in cobweb rays.
The ship in cloudy spaces hangs,
In blunt and smoky splendor.
Yonder is seen the shore of your bare land
Of wormwood, drought, and stone -
Your land fatigued
With being the thoroughfare of tribes and peoples.
I shall set you as a witness to their madness,
And I shall lead you by a bladelike path,
That you may bear within you the immense
Silence of the twilit, shimmering sea.
It's from Avrahm Yarmolinsky's anthology "A Treasure of Russian Verse" which I believe is public domain and available online if you want to track it down.
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Apr 16, 2014 16:26
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May 16, 2024 13:08
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- Tuxedo Catfish
- Mar 17, 2007
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You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
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I like Keats, Yeats, and the Beats.
Well, nobody's perfect.
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Feb 14, 2015 17:58
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Apr 16, 2014 16:26
