Today’s resource https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/home/en/tile was important to be able to carry out the prompt. I feel like I spent the better part of my day on an international adventure with stops in Italy, Argentina, Azerbijan, Croatia and Switzerland before settling on Sweden.
So here’s the prompt for the day with an example from Maureen showing how to write a homophonic translation.
Today’s optional prompt asks you to make use of today’s resource. Find a poem in a language that you don’t know, and perform a “homophonic translation” on it. What does that mean? Well, it means to try to translate the poem simply based on how it sounds. You may not wind up with a credible poem at the end, but this can be a fun way to step outside of your own mind for a bit, and develop a poem that speaks in a distinctive voice. As an example, here are the first four lines of a poem by the Norwegian poet Gro Dahle:
Linnea ligger syk under treet
‒ Oj oj oj, hvisker treet
Og treet lar sine blader falle
Det store treet, det snille treet
Based on the sound alone, I might translate this as
Lithe lines sink under the street.
Oh, that wintry street.
Oh, street of signs like falling blades
A street of shops and smiles.
For me, the real trick in using the resource was to avoid reading the poem in English first because the site prints the original poem with the English (or Dutch) translation right beside it. It’s hard to write an original “translation”, homophonic or otherwise, once the poet’s words are in your head. So here’s where today’s prompt took me.
Tesidarap
Day's end, forbidden and betrayed
Starlight appeared and soothed the night
Salamandria crept from hiding
The princess of midnight.
The gown she wore was fringed with lace
Effervescent with silver and shadow
Dazzling utopia. Did she know?
Moonlight was her poison, coming soon.
Framed by bare beech branches
His curse spoken.
Go back. Salamandria.
Hide before the moon steals your glow.
She's gone.
Here is the original poem by Lars Gustafsson in Swedish.
Paradiset
Kärret, förbjudet att beträda
Farligt djupt med fackelblomster och nate.
Salamandrarna som vi fångade
och kallade ‘vattenödlor’.
De ansågs ge vårtor på fingrarna.
Eftersom de själva var vårtiga.
Säkert utdöda nu. Vem bryr sig?
Plötsligt var pojken tjugo år gammal.
Framför honom låg långa livet.
Som kurländska slätten.
Bäcken. Salamandrarna.
Det var vi som tog bort alltsamman
Ingen annan.
And here’s the English translation of Lars Gustafsson’s poem by Susan W. Howard first published on Poetry International in 2005.
PARADISE
The swamp, forbidden to enter
Dangerous depths with purple loosestrife and bitter clover.
The salamanders that we caught
and called ‘water lizards’.
They were supposed to cause warts on fingers
Because they themselves had warts.
Surely extinct now. Who needs them?
Suddenly the boy was twenty years old.
Ahead of him, life,
extending endlessly like the plains of Kurland.
The creeks. The salamanders.
We took it all away.
No one else.
So it has nothing to do with moonlight or a midnight princess but it’s a great reminder of the importance of honoring the natural world we often take for granted. Not just tomorrow when we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, but every day, every way, every chance we get.
All Things Kalen 