I had two frocks from Woolworth’s in my case
Some Indian slip on sandals  made from gold
We’d never seen East Anglia and its space
I had two flowered frocks  inside my case
A smile stretched like  elastic  on my face
My smaller bag was full of bridal lace
I hoped the cottage was not dark and cold
But when I loved him,I  felt filled with grace
I had two frocks,  a nightdress, in my case
Some Indian slip on sandals made from gold

II  I I made this from a photo using Artweaver

You looked happy in your  pushchair
with buttoned corduroy leggings that toddlers used to wear
You were fierce, would never be left out
Even if trying drove you into a frenzy
You could play the piano,read music 
play with two hands
Why not more academic subjects?
You were born too late
As you grew, Dad began to die
What   kind of attention did anyone give you?
Strong with anger,desperate for love
Needing something that was your own
But you never knew that

The   familiar sound of morning was your tread
Coming up the stairs with Earl Grey tea
While I lingered lazily in bed
The  homely sound of morning was your tread
Now I think I hear it in my head
Rumbling like the bumbling of a bee
The  familiar sounds of morning were your words
Now I only have the BBC

Love can bust your mind like gelignite
Explosions of emotions  fill the air
Each one  hopes for joy and its delights
Yet love can break your heart like gelignite
And all your   being suffers  in this plight
As  the  heart breaks, so too will this pair
Love can blow your mind like gelignite
Explosions of emotions, keep them spare

The last dance was between our touching minds
No words were spoken ; we did  it alright
To your wordless wishes I was kind
The last dance was the best between two minds
Like music ,we need space between the lines
I shall not forget  you flew from sight
The last dance was between our playful minds
No words were spoken, love itself  is Light

We walked in rhythm  as if life were our dance
Holding hands, we smiled   whilst on our way
Exchanging too  a soft and loving glance
We walked in rhythm  as if  love were a dance 
Showing both the strength and  the nuance
I wish my love were still with me  at play
We walked in rhythm, our life  a home made dance
Holding hands, we smiled whilst on our way

I have  longed to see you one more time
I can endure that pain of loss again
Yet I still am with you in my dreams

I ‘d love to know your thoughts before you died
You concentrated,focussed, that was plain
I have  longed to see you one more time

I felt it was a Play we were inside
Then we’d come back home, where we have lain
We are still  companions  in my dreams

What of love is captured in a rhyme?
So much  so called poetry seems inane
I have  longed to see you one more time

Love is  not a concept of the mind
I need your comfort but I need in vain
We are still  companions  in my dreams

Now I walk alone on new terrain
I do not suffer torture, am not blamed
I have  longed to see you one more time
I  cannot ask you questions in my dreams

Fifty years since I became your bride
My old age unthinkable back then
No longer are you  happy by my side

Now I feel like drift wood on the tide
Going where I do not know or when
Fifty years since I became your bride

How to be alone, and how decide?
Grateful  am I to the words I pen
No longer are you smiling by my side

With no map or path, I roamed  plains wide
Wandered like a lunatic with pain
Fifty years since I became your bride

At least I am alive and  here reside
Wandering is no life for  those disdained
No longer are you  sitting by my side

I think of history and the years you spanned
The worst World War, your mother, life began
Fifty years since I became your bride
No longer are you  here;oh,love , you  died.

What to me may seem a worthless weed 
Bears its little flowers to create seeds
Thus  it spreads itself as Love requires
Humble speedwell,hear of our desires.

In the pavements cracks were home to grass
The sidestep slabs were broken like thick glass
When heavy frost came, rain formed frozen pools
I trod in them as I tore up to school

The crackling ice, the mist dropped on the park
Our ginger cat, the trees, the dog that barked
Our mother in the kitchen making tea
The oven by the fire, the big door key

Little signs spark  tender memories
The future  fiction, gone the  past abyss

https://drhobson.wordpress.com/2009/03/

This is the beginning

          It is impossible that any Russian poem should survive, undamaged, magically transported into the English language. The simplest Russian word has no exact equivalent in English. A table is a different table. The food on it is different. The life around it is different. Its image, its behaviour as a word is different; rectangular and immutable in English, possibly round and probably inflected in Russian. Better to admit defeat at the outset. It will be a different poem. All the more important, therefore, to try and preserve whatever you can. Not only the sense, but the spirit of the thing conveyed through the rhyme, the rhythm, the music of the original. If you are not a poet when you start to translate poetry, you will be by the time you are finished. It becomes so natural a means of expression that you find yourself writing your own stuff.

          Some translators, of course, were poets before they began. Great writers have translated other great writers. But you have only to compare the original with the translation to hear the persistence of the poet-translator’s creative voice, even while submitting himself to the discipline of faithfully following someone else’s ideas, someone else’s choice of the form in which they are to be expressed.

          Since the thing, then, is inherently impossible, why try? Why do it at all? There are, of course, some advantages for the English reader. He can satisfy his curiosity. For instance, why all the fuss about Griboedov? What is this wonderful verse-comedy of his? What characters did he create, what views did he hold, what feelings did he express? Why is he so great? This last, alas, is a question which no translation will answer. No, the true beneficiary of any translation is the translator. There is no better way of valuing a work, getting under the skin of it, sucking the juice out of every last line of it, than trying to translate it.

          I encountered Gore ot uma during my first year at London University, studying Russian language and literature. And here I must mention my only advantage over you Russians; I didn’t ‘do’ Gore ot uma  at school. (Imagine reading it for the first time at sixty-two.) One of our professors gave a lecture on the literature of the early 19^th Century. ‘There is this brilliant verse-comedy by Aleksandr Griboedov’, he said, ‘but it is completely untranslatable.’ The challenge was irresistible. I went to the library after the lecture, took out the play and started at once.

          The problems were numerous. How to preserve Griboedov’s laconic style, compressed sometimes to the point of obscurity? What to do, for instance, with that reference to Tolstoi Amerikanets? Short of a footnote, how is the English reader to guess at that disastrous voyage of his? How to convey the irony implicit in Griboedov’s double game, in which Chatskii shows us the flaws in Moscow while Griboedov shows us the flaws in Chatskii? In the attempt to convey a sense of Griboedov’s  masterpiece, one is required to joke like an ambitious bureaucrat, think like a revolutionary, feel like a Moscow socialite or a young man in love – in short, to jettision one’s own view of the world, and share, briefly, for the space of a play, the author’s – or his characters’ – experience of it. the problems are varied; the challenge is always the same. How to preserve the spirit of the original.

Please lie down.Tell me what brings you here
Not literally?            [ could be autistic]
No, you are always here in a sense.
Well, you know English is not my first language [ excuses]
No,  you were here before language.How hard to imagine.
I have come here because of my guilt   [ trying to be human ]
I’ll be judge, I’ll be  jury, said cunning old fury

Very adroit [Shows off his skills]
What’s  that?
The opposite of maladroit
Why did you send the Flood over the earth\~
I pressed the wrong button.                [Teases me]
That is absurd. There were no buttons then
Not even on coats?                    [Pretends to be ignorant]
Well you should know
I don’t like little  details in my creatiity           [ Thinks he is superior]
Come on, tell me whatever comes to mind
I like playing with water and fire as well          [ Melanie Klein  come here]
You tell me
It’s such fun                         [ emotionally stunted]
Like War?
It was not so bad to start with { always an excuse…. lacking in adult responsibility]
What, even Cain and Abel?
Very sad but it’s just a story      [ Derrida,Levinas, Enid Blyton]
Don’t tell me you are a post modernist
I can be what I want , for  fun you know    [ repeats himself]
I didn’t know God has fun
Well you do now           [ Humour]

Right that is £120

What, you think I should pay?           [ feels superior]
I have to live,Lord.I have a family [     childish plea]
So  did I once             [Sarcasm and grief]

Coming in, the whispers of your breath
Float into avid ears, there is no death
Your honey smell, your eyes so sharp and kind
Evoke your image in  the deeps of mind

I see your shadow swiftly move away
There is no tomorrow, just today
And you are here, your smile remains yet fades
Deep in the woods of   feeling  there are glades

You do not hide, you exercise your tact
You knew people’s faces, not the facts
You said  you felt so tender when we lay
And smiled when we enjoyed  ourselves at  play

You  hide inside the air,I breathe you in
I let you go,  I see you  float again.

The humid air of Summer  makes us sweat
No time for kissing lovers  on the lawn
Too much movement constitutes a threat

Behind the rose bush hides our old  black cat
Wanting to take rest, his coat untorn.
The humid air of Summer  makes us sweat

Few lovers want to risk sharp heart attacks
Better to go out in cool,  white dawn
Too much movement  is then less a threat

In Van Gogh’s night, the stars look almost black
Here is his lost ear, alas, it’s torn
The humid air of Summer  makes us sweat

Genius  knows  much more than  what we lack
The motley objects and the chosen form
Too much sorrow constitutes a threat

If we  start to work, we are new born
Resisting weather and  the sunlit barn
The humid air of Summer  makes us sweat
Too much movement constitutes a threat

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_(cyclone)

“The eye is a region of mostly calm weather at the center of strong tropical cyclones. The eye of a storm is a roughly circular area, typically 30–65 kilometers (19–40 miles) in diameter. It is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather and highest winds occur. The cyclone’s lowest barometric pressure occurs in the eye and can be as much as 15 percent lower than the pressure outside the storm.^[1]”