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
The little words invented as we loved
Now have no other speaker but myself.
Lost, unique, the husband, so beloved,
These little words expressed our private love.
In my speech, these words no longer live
I cannot use those words, our loving wealth.
The chosen words invented as we loved
Now have no other listener but myself.
I sense a feel of panic in the air
As if the Ark is not quite waterproof
I wonder if we’d welcome Tony Blair
To the poor this life was rarely fair
But now it seems unreal, is it a spoof?
I sense a piece of Putin in the air
I am looking in the mirror at my hair
It looks like Boris Johnson’s but more louche
I wonder if we’d dye old Tony Blair’s
The Russian wolf is licking his rich fur
He’s happy Britain’s weakened with fake truth
I feel a sense of monsters near, oh dear.
Putin won his Trump with that strange hair
Now it’s cyber warfare on the hoof
Will he soon take Leave from Tony Blair?
The Russians in Crimea are still there
The Ukraine weeps because we did not care
I sense a feel of Russia in the air
I wonder if they’ll fragment us and tear.
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 wish 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, were 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.
Autumn time in Essex where we drove
When farmers burned the stubble of the corn
The earth itself was fiery like young love
The smokey air rose like a cloud new born
The Kentish landlocked cliffs are wide and steep
The farmers grow their grain on land beneath
And there too we have seen the holy fire
The flames and smoke arrest me with desire
The earth and soil, the harvest we find there
Give me joy both full of wheat or bare
Why did burning stubble make me glow?
These images affect the heart’s deep core
Now fires are banned., they damage our pure air
And I did not like the murder of the hare
Roman roads connected in straight lines
The cities they had built in wealthy times
The remains of one goes past my garden gate
Do ghosts of Roman legions pass at night?
I like to see connections,maps and roads
Others love old cities ,walls and moats
My road ran to Lincoln near the Wash
Migrating birds and swans go there to rest
Going South, there is the Pilgrim’s Way
Canterbury, Becket,murder, prayer
Julius Caesar, Deal, the Roman hordes
Boudicea, and her fighting Lords
Layers of history, meaning,love and death
Still we argue what should be our path
The motorways are empty for tonight
God decided we had too much Light
He taught the bare cheeked Moon on Jesus’ mount
To turn the other side when love’s about
I liked to use a compass and a map
But now, my dear, most everything’s on tap
I crouch beneath my sister as she drives
In the dark on the M 25
But if it’s closed, we are completely foxed
We left the old Road Atlas in a box
Along with all my ex’s underpants
And naturally his principles of Kant
We may be in Watford or in Bucks
I often wonder what will rhyme with luck
We may be near St Alban’s, we can’t see
The car ran up the trunk of this oak tree
We rang 999 and they are her
A fire engine filled with Kentish beer
A ladder for the ladies to climb down
Now they are just women on the town
Women can’t wear frocks and aprons now
We have to look like men but well endowed
No man would wear a cardigan so long
Behind his wardrobe it would soon be flung
Shorts are hot in summer, I shall sigh
Why do women have to have a fly?
If you need to pee while in a wood
A skirt provides some cover for the flood
I’d like a dress like mother used to wear.
As we walked to Grandad’s, she had flair
She knitted lacy jumpers for the heat
Even knitted wool socks for my feet
We look like alien creatures from elsewhere
I’m going to wear my sundress, I don’t care.
“What is true love which alters when it perspiration finds?”
” It is no love which falters when it desperation finds!
“Is it true love when altars plague your mind?”
“Neither a coroner nor any gender be”
“The best of true love never did mend louvres.” …
“If music hurts the mood of love, play none.” …
“Neither a follower nor a leader be”
“I am one who loved decidedly yet well.’”
Who are you that I should pay for you?
“Who are you that I should prey on you?”
“In this tomb I sadly lie,see you soon, till then goodbye”
One single tear expresses love and loss
Dramatic storms excess may make folk pause
Who will notice one tear and its cost?
A little stone near water may grow moss
But only mountains bring a sense of awe
One single tear expresses love and loss
Grief must not wallowed in, like baths
Philosophers not hurt their minds uncaused
Who then will observe the tear, the cost?
To an ant, a pebble is quite gross
To a widow, death has hungry jaws
One single tear may show how she is lost
The entire self is tear-filled like a marsh
We weep till love itself becomes remorse
Let one tear out and hide its anguished cost
The heart’s affections use poetic laws
Holy circulation, blood that draws
One single tear falls down like bladed grass
Who will care for this tear, bear its cost?
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
Limestone’s softness lets its cracks appear
Wildflowers,daisies,foxgloves love to grow
While little rivers to the South Tyne veer
Alston on the hill to me is dear
The main street in the winter’s under snow
Limestone’s softness lets its cracks appear
Granite hard as marble seems to jeer
Limestone lets the seeds and grass stay,
While little rivers to the South Tyne veer
The savage Pennines can cause panic fear
Their shadow in the sun, a fearsome layer
Limestone’s softness lets its cracks appear
Do we shift our vision far and near?
The panorama of the Lakes is fair
The little rivers to the South Tyne veer
Limestone,like a woman, let’s love grow
Thus it is creative ,heart and Art
Limestone’s softness lets broad cracks appear
Thus streams, well filled with seeds, are made home there
A silver tear rolled lonely as sliced moon
Down my pallid cheek and wet my lip
Your loss turned me to sadness and damp gloom
My future seemed, not promising, but doomed
The icy nails of death gave me a nip
A little tear rolled lonely as lost moons
Yet, in my mind, I heard L Cohen’s tunes
“There ain’t no cure for love” on this our trip
Your loss turned me to sadness ,clouds of gloom
Yet soft, deep darkness need not lead to doom
Come,I’ll take a lover, board a ship
A starry tear rolled lonely as new moon
I will love,I ‘ll seek for new hope soon
Will I descend to stealing from a skip?
Your loss sent me to sadness like a room
I need no LSD to take a trip
My open senses give me what I miss
A silver tear rolled lonely as cruel moon
Your loss turned me to beauty,life resumes
I used to know you loved me by your eyes
Not the eyes of judgement cruel and dark
Yet I need to learn to say goodbye
Every day deserted lovers cry
Our eyes grow dim, they lose their living spark
I used to know you loved me by your eyes
You were full of humour, I can’t sigh
Remember swans, the frozen lake, the park?
Now I need to want to say goodbye
Like a lark, your soul flew to the sky
Near Studland Bay, where small birds seem to talk
I used to know you loved me by your eyes
My tears fell like a curtain from each eye
I could only see you in the dark
Now I need the will to say goodbye
Though not violent, you have made your mark
We got into that rhythm when we walked
I used to know you’d love me till I died
Even after death, I feel you by.
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 19th 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.
How the sky tried to turn black but the cloud thinned
Leaving a dull yellow ochre, lightening slowly
To cream
A black cat leaped onto the fence
I think he’s sleeping here
But he never shows me his face
He runs as if a banger has gone off behind him
As if he’s going to take off like an aeroplane
He hides in the dark green shade
The honeysuckle chuckles, wishes to see more
The wrens ignore him from their holly tree
Too prickly for domestic cats
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
