from aztec to english, from definition to poem...

ruby-throated hummingbird:
it is ashen, ash colored. at the top of its head and the throat, its feathers are flaming like fire. they glisten. they glow.

amoyotl (a water-strider):
it is like a fly, small and round. it has legs, it has wings; it is dry. it goes on the surface of the water; it is a flyer. it buzzes. it sings.

bitumen (a shellfish):
it falls out on the ocean shore; it falls out like mud.

seashell:
it is white. one is large, one is small. it is spiralled, marvelous. it is that which can be blown, which resounds. i blow the seashell. i improve, i polish the seashell.

a mushroom:
it is round, large, like a severed head.

the cave:
it becomes long, deep; it widens, extends, narrows. it is a constricted place, a narrowed place, one of the hollowed-out places. there are roughened places; there are asperous places. it is frightening, a fearful place, a place of death. it is called a place of death because there is dying. it is a place of darkness; it darkens; it stands ever dark. it stands wide-mouthed; it is widemouthed. it is wide-mouthed; it is narrow mouthed. it has mouths which pass through. i place myself in the cave. i enter the cave.

from the 11th book of bernardino de sahagiun's "general history of the things of new spain" (florentine codex) translated from the aztec into english by charles e. dibble and arthur anderson, 1963, via "some/thing" issue 1, spring 1965, titled "found poems" by jerome rothenberg.

when spanterejst equals splintered edges...

spanterejst skibsskrog.

hull of ship in frame.

schiffsrumpf, fertig in den spanten.

membrures d'une coque de navire.

...

splintered edges squibs rocks.

howl of shapes on flume.

shifts rough, floating in dense expanses.

membranes dunes cork and nativities.

...

winter hedges scabs rakes.

bowl of shades aflame.

shafts laugh, flowing indents expanded.

remembering loons quirks activities.

...

two halves of life...

the original german and english translation of friedrich holderlin's poem - halfte des lebens / the half of life, from "some poems by friedrich holderlin, published by new directions in 1943, and translation by frederic prokosch. this copy belonged to a poet who underlined and re-translated or corrected several of the poems, such as this one.

in the german original he circled the word "wo", which i'm guessing from the translation means "where". the strange thing is that the word "und" which means "and" is actually missing from the english, but that word is not circled.

as the english poem begins with the word laden, the english version of this particular poem is also laden, but with corrections rather than pears. in the third line the word "lies" is crossed out, and indeed it seems it does not exist in the german original, but was added by the translator.

in the fourth line the word "beautiful" is crossed out, but in german it says "ihr holden schwane", which google translate tells me means:"sweet her swans". next he moves the word "you" down from line five to six, and the words "in the" down from line six to line seven. in line seven, he also crosses out the words "saintly sobering", and ignores the german "ins heilignuchterne" completely.(which google translates as "into heilignuchterne").

in the bottom half he also makes a number of changes, most interesting is the repairing of the line "the light of the sun" back to the original form in german of "sonnenschein" which i assume means sunlight or sunshine; and lastly the deletion of the word "banners" and replacing it with the words "weather vanes" - which clatter more than banners anyways.

in all of this it's quite wonderful to see the original german, and to be able to compare it to the final printed translation, and then to see the poet reading and thinking and shifting things one more level to bring them closer to the german orginal's intentions - as if things had gotten lost in the first translation and found in the second...

some snails...

1.
they have brought me a snail.

inside it sings
a map-green ocean.
my heart
swells with water,
with small fish
of brown and silver.

they have brought me a snail.

2.
me han traido una caracola

dentro le canta
un mar de mapa.
mi corazon
se llena de agua
con pececillos
de sombra y plata.

me han traido un caracola.

3.
my hand traces an artichoke

dented like a song
a mark on a map.
my heart
yearning for water
peculiar colors
of sadness and purples.

my hand traces an artichoke.

1. federico garcia lorca, snail, translated by william jay smith.
2. federico garcia lorca, snail, original language as written
3. federico garcia lorca, snail, translated intuitively...

et il n'y a pan ... (and there was pan...)

... and there was Pan. the poor boy alone. making music. breath blowing through the pipes. breath in the sky. air. survey. as if what is inside of his body, at rest in the sky. air. search. but this breath, this probe, floating, not empty. and there was Pan. making music. alone. only. and he wondered if music was really music, if there was no ear to listen. and there was Pan. open your eyes, his heart beating fast, rapidly, have balanced his song on the wind. search of his ears. reception. and where the butterfly is, as individual into a beautiful shade of purple, whose wings are like ears. where is the butterfly which seeks the song with the same kind of magnetic attraction of the search for the song butterfly. and there was Pan. making music. his. hers. song. search. beginning and created a sort of snowball high quality. a beautiful and tender. with its wings as ears, bending gently in the wind, like a large ball, almost like a room, perhaps as a trap, and has churned, whirled. continuous movement of song. he rolled the world and the sky, behind Pan, silence. feet planted on the wrong side of the earth. Pan. silence. still. forever. his singing a kind of floating satellite. search. and LO and here at a time, by the time the right time, perhaps, wings of this beautiful butterfly, ears or float, with its pardon fluttering beautiful wings graciousness in the heart songs, and she returns as if the nucleus of a multitude of flowers and music. and participates. and Pan attend. it silently. in the song. and the wind starts to move at its softness for him. and he, his butterfly net fallen long ago, yet his breath singing, Pan is in the silence. open their eyes skyward in the nostalgia that ultimately it is so gently with the wind in his hand and is on his ear and whispers the words that we can not hear, but words expresses where he waited for a very long ....

image, anonymous snapshot circa 1930, of a young boy dressed as pan.
text, written in english, translated into french via google, back to english via yahoo, back to french via google, back to english via google...

speaking of not speaking the language...

en route to belgium a few weeks ago, i stopped for a few days in paris. i was sitting in a cafe on the beautiful rue blanche having some tea and realized how nice it was to be sitting in public and not understanding a word anyone else was saying. after awhile i started to focus on the people sitting at the table next to me, who were speaking quite animated and loudly. i began to listen to their words and through a kind of "word association" began to write down in english a series of phrases that were suggested by the french that i was hearing (i have no real knowledge of the french language)...

"the text of heads
the moustache of snow
the boy is a girl
the condescending tone of laughter
like reading with a helmet on
stepping on your face
seagulls are like a crutch
but the birds are like this
like a field of quail and questions
sitting, sitting in the afternoon
she is truly enchanted
circles and churches of laughter
humming and singing endlessly
invisibly carried by a plane
tending to see more slowly
she prefers a wall with hands on each end
a voyage of looking, like a line
like the mother of jesus breaking
being pushed down a drain
trees, sure, in certain zones."

i've been working with this kind of intuitive translation for years now, but i recently read e. canetti's the agony of flies and found this wonderful related gem:

"and what if the words of different languages had some secret connection to one another."

on many levels this "what if" is the foundation of all my work and working process.

finding a lost song...

"spring had come to the mountain-tracts. it was sunday morning; the weather was mild and calm, but the air somewhat heavy, and the mist lay low on the forest... when he opened the door the fresh smell of the leaves met him; the garden lay dewy and bright in the morning breeze, but from the ravine sounded the roaring of the waterfall, now in lower, then again in louder booms, till all around seemed to tremble... as he went further from the fall, its booming became less awful, and soon it lay over the landscape like the deep tones of an organ."
bjornstjerne bjornson, arne, 1869

three things...

1. every time i was outside of a city in norway i could hear the white noise of waterfalls. if a mountain was visible, this sound was also audible. sometimes it was crushing, and sometimes i didn't notice it until i put on headphones while trying to record some small sound; and it seemed to exemplify some continual force of nature... it was seemingly everywhere.

2. while i was in norway i was reading an 1869 edition of arne and what i started to think about was this idea of text translation and how perhaps, translations done at the time of the writing are closer to the language and feeling of the original, as opposed to recent translations that are borne of great research but an entirely different moment in time. arne feels so much like an artefact of an era, and the english language in this early translation, while possibly not perfect in relating the nuances of bjornson's norwegian, might be closer to capturing that victorian era norwegian feeling in english than a translator would be able to today...

3. the genius of this quote is twofold. one is that sense of poetry that comes from finding music in nature. there are so many pitches and tones ringing together in moving water sounds, and this somewhat mystical passage is so connected to the actual experience of hearing these things. the other side of the quote for me is in the idea that one can manipulate the sounds of the landscape by simply walking around and experiencing them from different ear view points. if one receeds from a loud sound it can become tolerable and beautiful - ideas that cage would exploit with regards to the listener also being a composer, and the audience finding music in various types of experiences...who'd have thought of finding such things in a beautiful little old romantic tale...