Favourite Poem

[Menydh]

I learned this poem in Catalan when I was a very young child, during the regime of General Franco. Some say that Catalan was prohibited by Franco. Yet, I learned this poem in an official school textbook entitled "A través de España" (Across Spain).


L'Emigrant

Dolça Catalunya,
pàtria del meu cor,
quan de tu s’allunya
d’enyorança es mor.


Hermosa vall, bressol de ma infantesa,
blanc Pirineu,
marges i rius, ermita al cel suspesa,
per sempre adéu!
Arpes del bosc, pinsans i caderneres,
cantau, cantau;
jo dic plorant a boscos i riberes:
adéu-siau!

¿On trobaré tos sanitosos climes,
ton cel daurat?,
mes ai, mes ai!, ¿on trobaré tes cimes,
bell Montserrat?
Enlloc veuré, ciutat de Barcelona,
ta hermosa Seu,
ni eixos turons, joiells de la corona
que et posà Déu.

Adéu, germans; adéu-siau, mon pare,
no us veuré més!
Oh, si al fossar on jau ma dolça mare
jo el llit tingués!
Oh mariners, el vent que me’n desterra,
que em fa sofrir!
Estic malalt, mes ai!, torneu-me a terra,
que hi vull morir!

Jacint Verdaguer (1845 - 1902)

[MDIEIR]

Apology

By Amy Lowell

1874-1925
Be not angry with me that I bear
Your colours everywhere,
All through each crowded street,
And meet
The wonder-light in every eye,
As I go by.

Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze,
Blinded by rainbow haze,
The stuff of happiness,
No less,
Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds
Of peacock golds.

Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way
Flushes beneath its gray.
My steps fall ringed with light,
So bright,
It seems a myriad suns are strown
About the town.

Around me is the sound of steepled bells,
And rich perfumed smells
Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud,
And shroud
Me from close contact with the world.
I dwell impearled.

You blazon me with jewelled insignia.
A flaming nebula
Rims in my life. And yet
You set
The word upon me, unconfessed
To go unguessed.

[Menydh]

Vida Retirada


¡Qué descansada vida
la del que huye el mundanal ruido
y sigue la escondida
senda por donde han ido
los pocos sabios que en el mundo han sido!


Que no le enturbia el pecho
de los soberbios grandes el estado
ni del dorado techo
se admira fabricado
del sabio Moro, en jaspes sustentado.


No cura si la fama
canta con voz su nombre pregonera
ni cura si encarama
la lengua lisonjera
lo que condena la verdad sincera.


¿Qué presa a mi contento
si soy del vano dedo señalado?
¿Si en busca de este viento
ando desalentado
con ansias vivas, con mortal cuidado?


¡Oh monte, oh fuente, oh rio,
o secreto seguro y deleitoso!
Roto casi el navío
a vuestro almo reposo
huyo de aqueste mar tempestuoso.


Un no rompido sueño,
un día puro, alegre, libre quiero;
no quiero ver el ceño
vanamente severo
de a quien la sangre ensalza o el dinero.


Despiérteme las aves
con su cantar sabroso no aprendido;
no a los cuidados graves
de que es siempre seguido
el que al ajeno arbitrio está atentido.


Vivir quiero conmigo
gozar quiero del bien que debo al Cielo.
a solas, sin testiggo,
libre de amor, de celo,
de odio, de esperanzas , de recelo.


Del monte en la ladera,
por mi mano plantado, tengo un huerto,
que con la primavera
de bella flor cubierto
ya muestra en esperanza el fruto cierto.


Y como codiciosa
por ver y acrecentar su hermosura
desde la cumbre airosa
una fontana pura
hasta llegar corriendo se apresura.


Y luego sosegada,
el, paso entre los árboles torciendo,
el suelo de pasada
de verdura vistiendo
y con diversas flores va esparciendo.


El aire el huerto orea
y ofrece mil olores al sentido;
los árboles menea
con un manso ruido
que del oro y del cero pone olvido.


Téngame su tesoro
los que de un falso leño se confían;
no es mío ver el lloro
de los que desconfían
cuando el cierzo y el álbrego porfían.


La combatida antena
cruje, y en ciega noche el claro día
se torna , al cielo suena
confusa vocería
y la mar enriquecen a porfía.


A mí una pobrecilla
mesa de amable paz bien abastada
me basta, y la vajilla
de fino oro labrada,
sea de quien la mar no teme airada.


Y mientras miserable-
mente se están los otros abrasando
con sed insaciable
del peligroso mando,
tendido yo a la sombra esté cantando.


A la sombra tendido,
de hiedra y lauro eterno coronado,
puesto el atento oído
al son dulce acordado
del plectro sabiamente meneado.



Fray Luis de León (1527-1591)

[Faísca]

Vinho do Porto
by: Carlos Paião
(was actually a song)

Primeiro a serra,
semeada Terra a Terra,
nas vertentes da promessa.
Depois o verde.
que se ganha ou que se perde.
quando a chuva cai depressa.

E nasce o fruto,
quantas vezes diminuto,
como as uvas da alegria.
E na vindima,
vão as cestas até cima,
com o pão de cada dia.

Suor do rosto,
p'ra pisar e ver o mosto,
nos lagares do bom caminho.
Assim cuidado,
faz-se sonho fermentado,
generoso como o vinho.

E pelo rio,
vai dourado o nosso brio,
nos Rabelos de uma vida.
E para o mundo,
vão garrafas cá do fundo,
duma gente envaidecida.

Por isso há festa,
não há gente como esta,
quando a vida nos empresta,
uns foguetes de ilusão!
Vem a fanfarra,
e os miúdos, a algazarra,
mais o Povo que se agarra,
p'ra passar a procissão.

E são atletas,
corredores de bicicletas,
e as palavras indiscretas,
na boca de algum rapaz.
E as barracas,
mais os cortes nas casacas,
os conjuntos, as ressacas,
e outro brinde que se faz:

Vinho do Porto,
vou servi-lo neste cálice,
alicerce da amizade em Portugal!
É um conforto
d'uma dor tomada aos tragos
que trazemos por vontade em Portugal!

Se nós quisermos entornar a pequenez.
Se nós soubermos ser amigos desta vez.
Não há champanhe que nos ganhe,
nem ninguém que nos apanhe,
porque o vinho é português!

Vinho do Porto,
Vinho de Portugal.
E vai à nossa,
à nossa Beira-Mal!
Á Beira-Porto,
há vinho por tomar,
há-de haver porto,
para o nosso mar.

Vinho do Porto,
Vinho de Portugal.
E vai à nossa,
à nossa Beira-Mal!
Á Beira-Porto,
há vinho por tomar,
há-de haver porto,
para o desconforto,
(para o que anda torto)
neste navegar!

[svin]

Edgar Allan Poe

Alone
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

[Savage]

A. C. Swinburne

2.Chorus from 'Atalanta in Calydon'

Before the beginning of years,
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And life, the shadow of death.
And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;
And dust of the laboring earth;
And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after,
And death below and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span,
With travail and heavy sorrow,
The holy spirit of man.
From the winds of the north and the south,
They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labor and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,
And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.

[Faísca]

I like this poem. It's not a translation, Fernando Pessoa wrote it in English.

I am the escaped one,
After I was born
They locked me up inside me
But I left.
My soul seeks me,
Through hills and valley,
I hope my soul
Never finds me.

[Ricardo Reis]

K. Kavafis is my favourite poet. Unfortunately most of the translation attempts of his work in English suck because of the idiom he use in his poems. However, there's Keeley - Sherrard translation of the "Collected Poems" which is more than decent.
Here is one of my favourite poems (a bit self apologetic):



DANGEROUS THOUGHTS

Said Myrtias (a Syrian student
in Alexandria during the reign
of the Emperor Konstans and the Emperor Konstantios;
in part a heathen, in part chistianized):
“Strengthened by study and reflection.
I won’t fear my passions like a coward;
I’ll give my body to sensual pleasures,
to enjoyments I’ve dreamed of,
to the most audacious erotic desires,
to the lascivious impulses of my blood,
with no fear at all, because when I wish—
and I’ll have the will-power, strengthened
as I shall be by study and reflection—
when I wish, at critical moments I will recover
my spirit, ascetic as it was before.”

[Herac]

Vive

Vive, dizes, no presente,
Vive só no presente.

Mas eu não quero o presente, quero a realidade;
Quero as cousas que existem, não o tempo que as mede.

O que é o presente?
É uma cousa relativa ao passado e ao futuro.
É uma cousa que existe em virtude de outras cousas existirem.
Eu quero só a realidade, as cousas sem presente.

Não quero incluir o tempo no meu esquema.
Não quero pensar nas cousas como presentes; quero pensar nelas
como cousas.
Não quero separá-las de si-próprias, tratando-as por presentes.

Eu nem por reais as devia tratar.
Eu não as devia tratar por nada.

Eu devia vê-las, apenas vê-las;
Vê-las até não poder pensar nelas,
Vê-las sem tempo, nem espaço,
Ver podendo dispensar tudo menos o que se vê.
É esta a ciência de ver, que não é nenhuma.


by Alberto Caeiro (Ferdinand Person)

[Savage]

Aleister Crowley, 1929

HYMN TO PAN

Thrill with lissome lust of light,
O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me,
Come with Apollo in bridal dress
(Shepherdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautifal God,
In the moon of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of the amber fount!
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantonness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain - come over the sea,
(Io Pan! Io Pan!)
Devil or God, to me, to me,
My man! My man!
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill!
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring!
Come with flute and come with pipe!
Am I not ripe?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion and sharp as an asp -
Come, O come!
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All-devourer, all begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye,
And the token erect of thorny thigh,
And the word of madness and mystery,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan Pan! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! I am awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The Gods withdraw;
The great beasts come, Io Pan! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn.
I am Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan!
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end,
Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! Io Pan!

[Sinergia]

“Miré los muros de la Patria mía,
si un tiempo fuertes, ya desmoronados,
de la carrera de la edad cansados,
por quién caduca ya su valentía.

Salíme al campo, vi que el sol bebía
los arroyos del yelo desatados,
y del monte quejosos los ganados,
que con sombras hurtó su luz al día.

Entré en mi casa; vi que, amancillada,
de anciana habitación era despojos;
mi báculo, más corvo y menos fuerte;

vencida de la edad sentí mi espada.
Y no hallé cosa en que poner los ojos
Que no fuese recuerdo de la muerte.”

Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas

[Vincent]

Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'...

... And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven

[Erasmus]

HILAIRE BELLOC


Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa

I

Lady and Queen and Mystery manifold
And very Regent of the untroubled sky,
Whom in a dream St. Hilda did behold
And heard a woodland music passing by:
You shall receive me when the clouds are high
With evening and the sheep attain the fold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.

II

Steep are the seas and savaging and cold
In broken waters terrible to try;
And vast against the winter night the wold,
And harbourless for any sail to lie.
But you shall lead me to the lights, and I
Shall hymn you in a harbour story told.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.

III

Help of the half-defeated, House of gold,
Shrine of the Sword, and Tower of Ivory;
Splendour apart, supreme and aureoled,
The Battler's vision and the World's reply.
You shall restore me, O my last Ally,
To vengence and the glories of the bold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.

Envoi

Prince of the degradations, bought and sold,
These verses, written in your crumbling sty,
Proclaim the faith that I have held and hold
And publish that in which I mean to die.

[Sergius]

Two poems by Georg Trakl. And decent translations.

Rondel
Verflossen ist das Gold der Tage,
Des Abends braun und blaue Farben:
Des Hirten sanfte Flöten starben
Des Abends blau und braune Farben
Verflossen ist das Gold der Tage.

Rondel
Flown away is the gold of days,
The evening's brown and blue colors:
The shepherd's soft flutes have died,
The evening's blue and brown colors;
Flown away is the gold of days.



Rosenkranzlieder
An die Schwester
Wo du gehst wird Herbst und Abend,
Blaues Wild, das unter Bäumen tönt,
Einsamer Weiher am Abend.
Leise der Flug der Vögel tönt,
Die Schwermut über deinen Augenbogen.
Dein schmales Lächeln tönt.
Gott hat deine Lider verbogen.
Sterne suchen nachts, Karfreitagskind,
Deinen Stirnenbogen.

Nähe des Todes
O der Abend, der in die finsteren Dörfer der Kindheit geht.
Der Weiher unter den Weiden
Füllt sich mit den verpesteten Seufzern der Schwermut.
O der Wald, der leise die braunen Augen senkt,
Da aus des Einsamen knöchernen Händen
Der Purpur seiner verzückten Tage hinsinkt.
O die Nähe des Todes. Laß uns beten.
In dieser Nacht lösen auf lauen Kissen
Vergilbt von Weihrauch sich der Liebenden schmächtige Glieder.

Amen
Verwestes gleitend durch die morsche Stube;
Schatten an gelben Tapeten; in dunklen Spiegeln wölbt
Sich unserer Hände elfenbeinerne Traurigkeit.
Braune Perlen rinnen durch die erstorbenen Finger.
In der Stille
Tun sich eines Engels blaue Mohnaugen auf.
Blau ist auch der Abend;
Die Stunde unseres Absterbens, Azraels Schatten,
Der ein braunes Gärtchen verdunkelt.




Rosary Songs
To the Sister

Where you go becomes autumn and evening,
Blue deer, which sounds under trees,
Lonely pond in the evening.
Quietly the flight of birds sounds,
The gloom above the arches of your eyes.
Your narrow smile sounds.
God has bent your lids.
At night stars seek, Good Friday's child,
The arch of your forehead.

Nearness of Death

O the evening, which goes into the sinister villages of childhood.
The pond under the willows
Fills with the contaminated sighs of gloom.
O the forest, that quietly lowers the brown eyes,
When from the lonely one's bony hands
The purple of his ecstacized days sinks down.
O the nearness of death. Let us pray.
During this night on tepid pillows
Yellowed by incense the lank limbs of lovers release.

Amen

Putrid shape gliding through the rotten room;
Shadows on yellow wallpapers; in dark mirrors
The ivory sadness of our hands arches.
Brown beads run through the dead fingers.
In the stillness
The blue poppy-eyes of an angel open.
The evening is also blue;
The hour of our dying, Azreal's shadow,
Which darkens a brown garden.





Taken from Trakl: Poems (English) and Trakl: Gedichte (originals).