monday poem #225: Anna Akhmatova, "Wild honey has the scent of freedom" (trans. Jane Kenyon)
Translating poetry is difficult in general; translating formal poetry, as Kenyon notes in her introduction to these translations, presents additional problems: "it is impossible to translate with fidelity to form and to image." Kenyon chose fidelity to image, but in some cases, such as this one, she and her co-translator manage at least to evoke, if not to capture, the form of the original.
Wild honey has the scent of freedom
dust-of a ray of sun,
a girl's mouth-of a violet,
and gold-has no perfume.
Watery-the mignonette,
and like an apple-love,
but we have found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.
- Anna Akhmatova
reprinted in Jane Kenyon's Collected Poems
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Wild honey has the scent of freedom
dust-of a ray of sun,
a girl's mouth-of a violet,
and gold-has no perfume.
Watery-the mignonette,
and like an apple-love,
but we have found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.
- Anna Akhmatova
reprinted in Jane Kenyon's Collected Poems
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth