Why are you n o t doing everything you can?
So, thursday morning I had one of those unexpeted treats of a moment.
My alarms is set to the radio. Now, originally it was set to WFUV, a station I am quite fond of. Somewhere along the line though, it got kick or something and ended up on the most bizarre, eclectic station. So, it's thursday morning, 7 a.m. Barely awake, I hear the words "and now, Patsy Cline." Up started Walking After Midnight. As dead as I was at that moment, I knew that it was early, I was tired and the day would be long and arduous. Regardless, I was utterly content for those 2 and a half minutes...I can't even express the feeling. Patsy, I love you.
Ok, so I've been reviewing my translations of Nina Iskrenko for a translation reading in which I am participating next week. And since I said I'd do this a while back, here are a few of my translations of her work:
***
About that there's no need to speak
There's no need to speak about that
About that airy embrace
leaning over crumpled
unmasking a monster
with a crooked metempsychosic mouth
Yes well him What about him
He's bigger before dinner
Let's talk about that
well what about that again about that
It's a pity about that
Weary Sun...
She appeared to him in a dream
She said Give
He said Suddenly
Or she said He asked To where?
He was no one to her Nearly no one
Well he could once present an overcoat
Well he could twice Grass was there
He thought you you you
He thought wast-ast-aste
War ends beauty began
War ended Well and that
He was not was not he was not with her
He sensed with his palate sour heat
He lived with hope that is to say war
He waited he thought Yes no He did not wait
Indignence He sensed her metal
Was that it? Metal and chalk
He did not know how
There was a lake there Or a pond
He thought then many-many years
Was it that? A lake? A pond?
And look weary like the sun he sat
Bidding farewell tenderly little flowers he ate
He almost didn't sleep that night
She appeared Said Old man
He watched himself Old man
Watched and wept Old man old man
There was a lake there Or a pond
and girls crawled toward the trees to be photographed
very clean airy in embroidered blouses
She was simply grandiose
She is grandiose But he is an old boy
He cries at night Places himself under a stool
Fetches a wine glsas But he does not want to drink
But of course he drinks
She appears and calls
What does she need Why does she call
He was not with her And now she calls
In that nearness to another light
old sick bald children
dance tango with love and immortality
weary suuuuuuun
tenderly with the sun paaa-arting
In that hour you confeeeeessed
pair-pa-pa
param parara
***
When Fellini was buried
We ate boiled fish
Preswiter transgressed the holy triad
and fell like a nail from the Synod of the sacred bosom
When they carried him away on their shoulders to darkness
and blew uncertainty with incense
they presented routine kindness to us
one to one in trembling denominations
One to one million The Caucasus
persisted in a humanitarian war
But it's better already I stand on the edge
and gobble up a hnk of emergency bread
while they refute my ear
or eye
They will correct amateurs of quick drive
and of a visceral global approach
So much the greater my darling said that in really crazy weather
of zero to minus two we cannot trust the reins
to some kind of routine freak
When he flew from star to star
***
OR AGAIN
Permitted that you run
and your legs get mixed up in sheets
disappear into the mattress which sinks into them
and only O-oh /sigh/
OR AGAIN
Permitted you lie Assuming you are deprived of
10 square centimeters of pure skin comparatively
and you know that on principle it's yours and it does not deny greatness
But you are already so ripened
that you cannot become any larger
OR assuming
You all can still be
But in a given moment it carries you in a kind of "Honda" by a
nocturnal highway
And a sort of High or Way heedless of you is candidly
bewildered
Why are you n o t doing everything that you can?
Why are you not tunnelling through the glass walls
of a suburban home
where in a winter garden it and an iguana wink at each other drinking the sap
of young bamboo
Why after the pose "Running deer" or "Marguerita-
Design," do you return to the original position
"Dead dog"
wincing from the smells of a voluptuous civilization
from tobacco smoke
OR AGAIN
But enough about that
About your adversaries that are tired and dissolve into
apple sauce
A blanket covered your neutral physical body
the chassis noiselessly releasing
and in a dream crowded overhead with parakeets
the director of the bird fabrication "Phoenix" princess Alpha and a
Bastow-eyed hussar wish you a happy new year
And you all run run run
My alarms is set to the radio. Now, originally it was set to WFUV, a station I am quite fond of. Somewhere along the line though, it got kick or something and ended up on the most bizarre, eclectic station. So, it's thursday morning, 7 a.m. Barely awake, I hear the words "and now, Patsy Cline." Up started Walking After Midnight. As dead as I was at that moment, I knew that it was early, I was tired and the day would be long and arduous. Regardless, I was utterly content for those 2 and a half minutes...I can't even express the feeling. Patsy, I love you.
Ok, so I've been reviewing my translations of Nina Iskrenko for a translation reading in which I am participating next week. And since I said I'd do this a while back, here are a few of my translations of her work:
***
About that there's no need to speak
There's no need to speak about that
About that airy embrace
leaning over crumpled
unmasking a monster
with a crooked metempsychosic mouth
Yes well him What about him
He's bigger before dinner
Let's talk about that
well what about that again about that
It's a pity about that
Weary Sun...
She appeared to him in a dream
She said Give
He said Suddenly
Or she said He asked To where?
He was no one to her Nearly no one
Well he could once present an overcoat
Well he could twice Grass was there
He thought you you you
He thought wast-ast-aste
War ends beauty began
War ended Well and that
He was not was not he was not with her
He sensed with his palate sour heat
He lived with hope that is to say war
He waited he thought Yes no He did not wait
Indignence He sensed her metal
Was that it? Metal and chalk
He did not know how
There was a lake there Or a pond
He thought then many-many years
Was it that? A lake? A pond?
And look weary like the sun he sat
Bidding farewell tenderly little flowers he ate
He almost didn't sleep that night
She appeared Said Old man
He watched himself Old man
Watched and wept Old man old man
There was a lake there Or a pond
and girls crawled toward the trees to be photographed
very clean airy in embroidered blouses
She was simply grandiose
She is grandiose But he is an old boy
He cries at night Places himself under a stool
Fetches a wine glsas But he does not want to drink
But of course he drinks
She appears and calls
What does she need Why does she call
He was not with her And now she calls
In that nearness to another light
old sick bald children
dance tango with love and immortality
weary suuuuuuun
tenderly with the sun paaa-arting
In that hour you confeeeeessed
pair-pa-pa
param parara
***
When Fellini was buried
We ate boiled fish
Preswiter transgressed the holy triad
and fell like a nail from the Synod of the sacred bosom
When they carried him away on their shoulders to darkness
and blew uncertainty with incense
they presented routine kindness to us
one to one in trembling denominations
One to one million The Caucasus
persisted in a humanitarian war
But it's better already I stand on the edge
and gobble up a hnk of emergency bread
while they refute my ear
or eye
They will correct amateurs of quick drive
and of a visceral global approach
So much the greater my darling said that in really crazy weather
of zero to minus two we cannot trust the reins
to some kind of routine freak
When he flew from star to star
***
OR AGAIN
Permitted that you run
and your legs get mixed up in sheets
disappear into the mattress which sinks into them
and only O-oh /sigh/
OR AGAIN
Permitted you lie Assuming you are deprived of
10 square centimeters of pure skin comparatively
and you know that on principle it's yours and it does not deny greatness
But you are already so ripened
that you cannot become any larger
OR assuming
You all can still be
But in a given moment it carries you in a kind of "Honda" by a
nocturnal highway
And a sort of High or Way heedless of you is candidly
bewildered
Why are you n o t doing everything that you can?
Why are you not tunnelling through the glass walls
of a suburban home
where in a winter garden it and an iguana wink at each other drinking the sap
of young bamboo
Why after the pose "Running deer" or "Marguerita-
Design," do you return to the original position
"Dead dog"
wincing from the smells of a voluptuous civilization
from tobacco smoke
OR AGAIN
But enough about that
About your adversaries that are tired and dissolve into
apple sauce
A blanket covered your neutral physical body
the chassis noiselessly releasing
and in a dream crowded overhead with parakeets
the director of the bird fabrication "Phoenix" princess Alpha and a
Bastow-eyed hussar wish you a happy new year
And you all run run run