I'm considering a Scots translation of Queneau's Le chardon. Help will be needed. Anyone up for it?
The first line might be;
For aw that fan on the butcher's steen I shall lie
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
OT: well versed
(161 posts)-
Posted 6 years ago #
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GOOD KING WENCESLAS
Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the feast of Stephen,
Where the tarmac lay about
Potholed and uneven,
Brightly shone the glass around,
On the infrastructure,
When a cyclist hit the ground,
Suffering a pu- u- -uncture.“Hither, page and stand by me,
Why’s that cyclist falling?
Yonder transport policy,
Looks like it’s appalling.”
“Sire that is without an end,
Trunk roads get full budget,
When it comes to cycling spend,
They will always fu- u – dge -it.“Bring me plans and bring me powers
Bring me active travel
Thou and I will ride some hours,
In the mud and gravel.”
Page and monarch forth they rode,
Motorists were brisker,
In the weather nothing slowed.
Passed them by a whi – i -isker.“Sire this path’s as slick as grease,
Leaf mush makes it slippery,
Undermined by roots from trees,
Hazardous and cripply.”
“Yes my page, this is insane,
Drainage badly fitted,
Bend your way through this chicane
Back to where it’s gri-i -ted.”In his master’s tracks he rolled,
Tortuous and gated,
Nothing breaks the motors’ mould,
Lanes unsegregated.
Cyclists pray to all the saints,
One day they’ll deliver,
Routes instead of signs and paints,
This year next year ne -e -ver.Posted 6 years ago # -
@Rosie bravo, and also now have nice image of King W out on a fat bike in the snow in his winter robes... (once the weather changes, of course).
Posted 6 years ago # -
I didn't read much for pleasure last year, so have a stash of books built up. I held on to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf as a treat to get back in the habit.
Apart from the total disregard for modern gender norms* in late Iron Age heroic poetry it is a thing of great beauty.
My vocabulary is reasonable but I needed a dictionary to read the introduction. This made me feel special, not stupid or irritated, so well is it written.
*All female characters in Beowulf are silent douce maidens or silent hideous harridans. That's not modern, is it?
Posted 6 years ago # -
Have you got John Gardner's Grendel on the pile? Is a good follow on (can lend) (not the German edition). Though I'd like to read Grendel's ma's PoV some time.
(Related: I loved this.)All female characters in Beowulf are silent douce maidens or silent hideous harridans. That's not modern, is it?
Cue hollow laughter. If only those tropes were restricted to Anglo-Saxon epics...
Posted 6 years ago # -
Blue Toboggans
scarves for the apaches
wet gloves for snowballs
whoops for white clouds
and blue toboggansstamping for a tingle
lamps for four o'clock
steamed glass for buses
and blue tobogganstuning-forks for Wenceslas
white fogs for Prestwick
mince pies for eventide
and blue toboggansTV for the lonely
a long haul to Heaven
a shilling for the gas
and blue toboggansPosted 6 years ago # -
LOVE AFTER LOVE
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved youall your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.- Derek Walcott
Posted 6 years ago # -
You'll have seen this gem by 'Nael' aged but 6;
The tiger
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The tiger is outCan't wait to see what she comes up with when she's 7.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I have seen now, and I am happier for it!
Posted 6 years ago # -
@iwrats, I can swap you on the aqueduct your famous Seamus for the best book I have read in ages Karoo by Steve Tesich. Steve won Oscar for his screenplay Breaking Away the cycling movie we are putting on for Edfoc. Is Edfoc happening this year?
Posted 6 years ago # -
@gembo I believe so - I received an email about EdFoC from the Heriot-Watt cycling mailing list just the other day. I don't remember the details, but it will spread out over three full weekends this year.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@gembo
Up for that mate. Timings? Or will I just set up camp on the verge?
EdFoC very much on the go I hear.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@iwrats any day really, mom to fri on the aqueduct, otherwise you can pop in. No brambles picked this year alas due to events.
Quick turnaround appreciated as others will want to read, it is pricey in hard copy but cheaper on kindle. Kindle I do not do.
Posted 6 years ago # -
World Poetry Day today.
The Gowk
Half doun the hill, whaur fa's the linn
Far frae the flaught o' fowk,
I saw upon a lanely whin
A lanely singin' gowk:
Cuckoo, cuckoo;
And at my back
The howie hill stüde up and spak:
Cuckoo, cuckoo.There was nae soun': the loupin' linn
Was frostit in its fa':
Nae bird was on the lanely whin
Sae white wi’ fleurs o' snaw:
Cuckoo, cuckoo;
I stüde stane still;
And saftly spak the howie hill:
Cuckoo, cuckoo.William Soutar
from Poems in Scots (The Moray Press, 1935)Posted 6 years ago # -
World Poetry Day, eh? Time to bust out some more Queneau alors.
Le Feu
Raymond QUENEAU
Lorsqu'en léthargie le fen sommeille
sous les herbes rasées par les brûlures
les pas dans la poussière des hommes
font lever les oiseaux assoiffés
gymnote rouge la flamme parle
aux sons qui s'enfuient des poteaux électriques
l'été qui donc meurt sous le chaume?
l'hiver jette la braise dans le foyer gelé
reliquaire brillant d'anciens soleils
déteints dans les terrains bourbeux
le charbon se casse comme la nuit des pôles
moucherons endormis dans l'ombre de
Dantzig
bulle enclavée dans le cristal
palimpsestes témoins des forêts de résine
l'activité du ciel donne à tous le courage
sous la poussée du tonnerre vers le sol
l'éclair une fleur un cœur
dans nos mains rouge comme est devenuPosted 6 years ago # -
gymnote rouge - am guessing this does not translate as a red letter to a P.E. teacher?
Posted 6 years ago # -
Gerda Stevenson
Hame-cominHame, hame, hame on the truck,
the wheels grind their grumly air,
hame tae ma mither, ma faither, ma lass,
but I canna come hame in ma hert nae mair,
noo that ma fieres are laid in the grund,
and the desert sun has blurred ma een,
stour in ma mind frae yon cramasie flooer
that smoors aa pain on field and street,
no, I canna, canna come hame in ma hert
noo I’ve duin whit I’ve duin
(orders are orders, ye dae whit ye maun),
and I’ve seen whit I’ve seen:oh, the bluid that brak through her skin
like a flooer frae its bud, yon bairn
that cam runnin, birlin, lauchin, skirlin
intae the faimily dance o mirth
we blew tae hell like a smirr o eldritch confetti;and noo I’m here, hame on the truck,
ma fieres in the grund, but I canna come hame
nae mair in ma hert, for hame’s naewhaur
when yer hert’s deid – nae langer sair – juist deid
wi dule and the wecht o bluid fallin like flooers,
cramasie flooers, that kill aa pain, smoor yer mind,
deid, deid, as the wheels grind.Posted 6 years ago # -
Oh, I need to read the collection that's in now. (Found a review: "Stevenson's childhood 'Eden' is a very Scottish paradise, one in which a neighbour, with Calvinist zeal, berates the happily playing girls, 'Get out! / Get out of my garden, / you dirty, dirty girls!', a cry akin to Alastair Reid's famous 'We'll pay for it!'")
Posted 6 years ago # -
Can't help myself with translating Queneau now. Who do I think I am exactly?
That Doesn't Scare Me So Much
Raymond QueneauI'm not so scared of my innards dying or the death of my nose or my bones
I'm not so scared me, this mosquitard baptised Raymond out of a father named QueneauI'm not so scared of where the bookard the embankments the offices the dust and boredom go
I'm not so scared me who writard and distils death in a few versesI'm not so scared
Night slips away between the moth-eaten eyelids of the dead
The night is gentle a readhead's caress the honey of the meridians of the north and south polesI'm not scared of tonight
I'm not scared of sleepabsolut That must be heavy as lead
as dry as lava as black as the sky
as deaf as a beggar braying at the edge of a bridge
I'm scared of misfortune grief and suffering and anguish and wild cherries and the excess of absence
I'm scared of the obese abyss where lies sickness and time and space and all the sins of the soulBut I'm not so scared of that lugubrious imbecile who'll spear me on the point of his tootpick when with a listless and placid eye defeated I have given up all my courage to the vermin of the present
One day I'll sing of
Ulyses or maybe
Achiles
Aeneas or maybe
Dido
Quixote or maybe
Panza
One day I'll sing of the happiness of the restfull the pleasures of angling or suburban peaceToday exhausted by the advancing hour rolling and twisted like a loutish oaf all round the dial beg a thousand pardonz for this skull - this bowling ball - the wistful whisper
the song of nothingnessWhat other cycling forum would stand for this?
Posted 6 years ago # -
If you'd done that a wee bit faster I wouldn't have needed Google translate*. NB you realise What other cycling forum would stand for this? reads like an intentional coda?
(*which gave me "yielded all my courage to the rodents of the present" which, while the rest was mangled, is pretty good, no?)
Posted 6 years ago # -
'Rongeurs' is problematic. It does mean rodents zoologically, but also carries the same meaning as the adjective as in rodent ulcer (don't Google that).
I thought 'vermin' captured the unpleasantness. I can't see how to get the erosion/corrosion/consumption in there.
Posted 6 years ago # -
My eldest daughter wishes to record me reading a late ditty of Rabbie Burns, Fairest Mad on Devon Banks (to the tune of Rothiemurchie). For the university project she is involved in. They need someone with a Scottish accent which is quite telling?
Rabbie kind of running out of steam by this point?
Err, also, how does Rothiemurchie go?
In cycling news The boys from the WHEC are coming to fix my brakes.
Posted 6 years ago # -
For the attention of @gembo and @bax:I'm guessing you will both know all about this already, but I didn't: Lichens for Marxists. One part poetry, one part cryptic crossword clues, one part random text generation meets stream of consciousness.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@unhurt very good title to Drew's anthology. Not sure what goes on after that
I was reciting only last night Dane Le petit tabac rouge. A poem I cobbled entitled Whisky Sours
Quite a miserable piece about pain, getting chucked and not being able to change. Now I had a colleague up the back started laughing which made me laugh right at the very serious bit. I am keen she accompanies me on accordion (think Gogol Bordello gipsy rather than killing Jimmy shand by nailing his feet to the floor).
Feedback from the daughter's project. The tutor thought the routine we did (me and my son) was like the archers. Though we were channellling Lard O'Connor and his henchman Gerry from radio dramatisation of Alex McCall smith
Posted 6 years ago # -
The Death of the Loch Ness Monster
Consider that the thing has died before we proved it ever lived
and that it died of loneliness, dark lord of the loch,
fathomless Worm, great Orm, this last of our mysteries –
haifend ane meikill fin on ilk syde
with ane taill and ane terribill heid —
and that it had no tales to tell us, only that it lived there,
lake-locked, lost in its own coils,
waiting to be found; in the black light of midnight
surfacing, its whole elastic length unwound,
and the sound it made as it broke the water
was the single plucked string of a harp –
this newt or salamander, graceful as a swan,
this water-snake, this water-horse, this water-dancer.Consider him tired of pondering the possible existence of man
whom he thinks he has sighted sometimes on the shore,
and rearing up from the purple churning water,
weird little worm head swaying from side to side
he denies the vision before his eyes;
his long neck, swan of Hell, a silhouette against the moon
his green heart beating its last
his noble, sordid soul in ruins.Now the mist is a blanket of doom, and we pluck from the depth
a prize of primordial slime –
the beast who was born from some terrible ancient kiss,
lovechild of unspeakable histories,
this ugly slug half blind no doubt, and very cold,
his head which is horror to behold
no bigger than our own;
whom we loathe, for his kind ruled the earth before us,
who died of loneliness in a small lake in Scotland,
and in his mind’s dark land,
where he dreamed up his luminous myths, the last of which was man.- Gwendolyn MacEwen
Posted 5 years ago # -
Lionel Shriver's early novel, Checker and the Derailleurs. Checker is a cycle courier in New York, also a drummer and song writer in a band the Derailleurs. His bicycle is called Zefal (trigger warning - bicycles were hurt in this novel).
This is one of Checker's songs:-
Don’t jump your red tonight,
You big yellow Checker,
I’m coming through light
At its last yellow flicker.
Show your bulging brights
Rights into my reflectors.
Listen close and you might
Here my freewheel ticker-ticker.
Hey city slickers:Lay perpendicular grates!
Check those rectangular plates!
One pothole on Sixth Avenue
Goes all the way to China.I am a midtown
Pedal pusher.
I am a traffic
Bushwhacker.
My brakes are clogged
With little children.
Greasy strays
Keep my gears workin’.Diggers, watch your tails;
Old ladies, hold your bladders.
Scarvy starlets, trim your sails
Or choke on Isadora tatters.
Better step back to the curb-
Enough women are batters.
Brave Lolitas, round the curve,
You don’t want to be flatter.
Hey hard-hatters:Lay perpendicular grates!
Check those rectangular plates!
One pothole on Sixth Avenue
Goes all the way to China.I am a midtown
Pedal pusher.
I am a traffic
Bushwhacker.
My brakes are clogged
With little children.
Greasy strays
Keep my gears workin’.Posted 5 years ago # -
Edwin Morgan, The Summons
The year was ending, and the land lay still.
Despite our countdown, we were loath to go,
kept padding along the ridge, the broad glow
of the city beneath us, and the hill
swirling with a little mist. Stars were right,
plans, power; only now this unforeseen
reluctance, like a slate we could not clean
of characters, yet could not read, or write
our answers on, or smash, or take with us.
Not a hedgehog stirred. We sighed, climbed in, locked.
If it was love we felt, would it not keep,
and travel where we travelled? Without fuss
we lifted off, but as we checked and talked
a far horn grew to break that people's sleep.Posted 5 years ago # -
Love that.
Posted 5 years ago # -
well it mentions hedgehogs, and that's what matters
fattening my visiting snufflers up with whiskas
now that we're into oktober -
big city
bright lights
cool, cool people
big cityeverybody I know can be found here
oh let the good times roll
waves of joy
yeah, I love you too
Posted 5 years ago # -
Somebody shut the door
You don't look like Martha and the Vandellas
Electricity comes from other Planets
Lock the door this time
Posted 5 years ago #
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