Poetry can stretch language to stratospheric heights but a poor translation can snap even the most worthy of poems back to a fagged, so-what Earth. Poet Robert Bly won’t get my vote as a top-tier poet but his selection and translation of the poems of twenty or so pretty good poets are pretty damn good.
THE WINGED ENERGY OF DELIGHT
Poems from Europe, Asia, and The Americas
selected translations by
Robert Bly 397 pages, 2004
Three poems from the book ...
Some PeopleSome people
ascend out of our life, some people
enter our life,
uninvited and sit down,
some people
calmly walk by, some people
give you a rose,
or buy you a new car,
some people
stand so close to you, some people
you’ve entirely forgotten,
some people, some people
are actually you,
some people
you’ve never seen at all, some people
eat asparagus, some people
are children,
some people climb up on the roof,
sit down on a table,
lie around in their hammocks, take walks with their red
umbrella,
some people look at you,
some people have never noticed you at all, some people
want to take your hand, some people
die during the night,
some people are other people, some people are you, some people
don’t exist,
some people do.
_________________________________
- ROLF JACOBSEN WHY ARRANGE THE PILLOWS Oh friend, I love you, think this over
carefully! If you are in love,
then why are you asleep?
If you have found him
give yourself to him, take him.
Why do you lose tract of him again and again
If you are about to fall into heavy sleep anyway.
Why waste time smoothing the bed
and arranging the pillows?
Kabir will tell you the truth; this is what love is like:
suppose you had to cut your head off
and give it to someone else,
what difference would that make?
__________________________________
- KABIR (b.1397-?) I AM NOT I I am not I
I am the one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at times I forget;
the one who remains silent when I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.
______________________________________
- JUAN RAMON JIMENEZ
