forkedtongues | Entries tagged with !30 days in 30 tongues

I'm sorry for not posting more often; clearly thirty poems in thirty days isn't going to be happening (unless a sudden burst of enthusiasm and new members arrives).

But here are some couplets by that pearl among poets - Amir Khusrau.

The original Farsi script can be found over here as image files.

Ba khak darat rau ast maara,
Gar surmah bechashm dar neaayad.

The dust of your doorstep is just the right thing to apply,
If Surmah (kohl powder) does not show its beauty in the eye!

Zabaan-e yaar-e mun Turkie, wa mun Turkie nami daanum,
Che khush boodi agar boodi zabaanash dar dahanay mun.

My beloved speaks Turkish, and Turkish I do not know;
How I wish if her tongue would have been in my mouth.

seekingferret

This is from a book I have called 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, edited by Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz. The book features an 8th Century Chinese poem called "Lu Chai" by Wang Wei, commonly translated into English as "Deer Park" or something along those lines. It then includes 19 different translations of the poem along with explorations of the differences between the translations.

My favorite translation, though, belongs to editor and Literature Nobelist Octavio Paz.

En la Ermita del Parque de los Venados

No se ve gente en este monte.
Sólo se oyen, lejos, voces.
Por los ramajes la luz rompe.
Tendida entre la yerba brilla verde.

And here's a good one in English, by Burton Watson

Deer Fence

Empty hills, no one in sight,
only the sound of someone talking;
late sunlight enters the deep wood,
shining over the green moss again.

ETAAnd just for

marina, a French translation by G. Margouliès

La Forêt

Dans la montagne tout est solitaire,
On entend de bien loin l'écho des voix humaines,
Le soleil qui pénètre au fond de la forêt
Reflète son éclat sur la mousse vert.

yasaman

"Address" by Sohrab Sepehri, translation by Marzieh Ghiasi

“Where is the home of the friend?” asked the rider at dawn.
The sky stood still.
The passerby bequeathed
the branch of light he held to his lips
to the darkness of sands
and pointed to a poplar and said:

“Before the tree,
there is a garden lane greener than God’s dream
where love is as blue as the wings of fidelity.
Go on till that alley which emerges from maturity,
then turn to the flower of loneliness,
two steps before the flower
remain at the foot of the eternal fountain of earthly legends
where a transparent fear overtakes you.
In the flowing sincerity of the space, you hear a rustling
A child you see
has climbed a tall pine, to take a chick from the nest of light
and you ask him
where is the home of the friend?”

خانه دوست كجاست؟” در فلق بود كه پرسيد سوار.
آسمان مكثی كرد.
رهگذر شاخه نوری كه به لب داشت به تاريكی شن‌ها بخشيد
و به انگشت نشان داد سپيداری و گفت
“نرسيده به درخت،
كوچه باغی است كه از خواب خدا سبزتر است
و در آن عشق به اندازه پرهای صداقت آبی است
می روی تا ته آن كوچه كه از پشت بلوغ، سر به در می آرد،
پس به سمت گل تنهایی می پيچی،
دو قدم مانده به گل،
پای فواره جاويد اساطير زمين می مانی
و تو را ترسی شفاف فرا می گيرد.
در صميميت سيال فضا، خش‌خشی می شنوی:
كودكی می بينی
رفته از كاج بلندي بالا، جوجه بردارد از لانه نور
و از او می پرسی
خانه دوست كجاست

I could not for the life of me get the quotes to go where I wanted them to in the Persian version, sorry about that. Also, I wanted to have transliteration/transcription of the Persian here too, especially since

dhobikikutti really wanted one, but since I can't make heads nor tails of any of the accepted transcription/transliteration schemes and all my attempts were coming out horribly un-pronounceable, I've given up on it. But bonus! Here is a link to a rather cheesy video of a guy reading the poem in Persian, if you want to know what it sounds like in the original Persian. And a more pleasant option, here is Axiom of Choice's song "Greener Than God's Dream," which features most of the poem sung beautifully by Mamek Khadem.

marina

Hi! I recently rediscovered this poem after originally learning it in 8th grade or so. I posted it to

poetry a while ago, I hope the repost is OK? The original is in Hebrew.

Pine
by Leah Goldberg
(Translation: Rachel Tzvia Back)

Here I will not hear the voice of the cuckoo.
Here the tree will not wear a cape of snow.
But it is here in the shade of these pines
my whole childhood reawakens.

The chime of the needles: Once upon a time –
I called the snow-space homeland,
and the green ice at the river's edge -
was the poem's grammar in a foreign place.

Perhaps only migrating birds know -
suspended between earth and sky -
the heartache of two homelands.

With you I was transplanted twice,
with you, pine trees, I grew -
roots in two disparate landscapes.

כאן לא אשמע את קול הקוקיה.
כאן לא יחבוש העץ מצנפת שלג,
אבל בצל האורנים האלה
כל ילדותי שקמה לתחיה.

צלצול המחטים: היֹה היה -
אקרא מולדת למרחב השלג,
לקרח ירקרק כובל הפלג,
ללשון השיר בארץ נוכריה.

אולי רק ציפורי-מסע יודעות –
כשהן תלויות בין ארץ ושמיים –
את זה הכאב של שתי המולדות.

אתכם אני נשתלתי פעמיים,
אתכם אני צמחתי, אורנים,
ושורשיי בשני נופים שונים

dhobikikutti

Ok, since its the U.S. National Poetry Month, lets see if we can get this comm rolling with a poem a day, in 30 different languages. With the original in script and/or transliteration along with a translation.

I can get us started out with the poems I tracked down for

dark_agenda prompts, but I can't do it on my own!

( Kiswahili (The Swahili Language) by Ahmad Bhalo )

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Forked Tongues

Languages and the Cultures Thereof

Entries tagged with !30 days in 30 tongues

Amir Khusrau's couplets

Lu Chai

Address by Sohrab Sepehri

Pine by Leah Goldberg

30 days in 30 tongues

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November 2018

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