Writing: Poems

I'd like to share some poems with you, some of my favourites.

The first is Italian, and I just love the cadence of the words as well as what they mean. I've tried in the past to do a translation; my Italian is a little rusty, but I think I got by well. It was written by Gabriele d'Annunzio.

O falce di luna calante
Che brilli su l'acque deserte
O falce d'argento, qual mèsse di sogni
Ondeggia al tuo mite chiarore qua giù!

Aneliti brevi di foglie
Sospiri di foiri dal bosco
Esalano al mare: non canto, non grido
Non suono pe 'l vasto silenzio va.

Oppresso d'amor, di piacere
Il popol de vivi s'addorme
O falce calante, qual mèsse di sogni
Ondeggia al tuo mite chiarore qua giù!

Roughly translated it means something like

Oh sickle of the glittering moon
That shines over deserted waters
Oh silver sickle, whose harvest of dreams
Waves down here under your gentle light!

Brief desires of leaves
Sigh from flower to forest
And exhale at sea: I sing not, I cry not
No sound breaks the vast silences.

Oppressed by love and peace
The people of life fall asleep
Oh glittering sickle, whose harvest of dreams
Waves down here under your gentle light!

As you can see, if you have any grasp of Italian, I had some issues with the first two-and-a-half lines of the second stanza, but that does not make the poem any less pretty.

I have a thing for mild, descriptive poems, especially when they feature landscapes that tell us something about people, or landscapes which are used as a metaphor for human actions. Take for instance my two favourite English language poems (which are terribly well-known, I know, but still), Daffodils and Ozymandias. The first, of course, is by William Wordsworth; the second, of course, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, husband of Mary Shelley (who of course wrote Frankenstein, one of my favourite Gothic novels also because I don't enjoy Dracula. I do enjoy Polidori's The Vampyre, though, so perhaps I should just stick to stories written by those having attended the 1816 meeting at Byron's house in Geneva for Gothic literature...).

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils
I especially like the phrase 'flash upon that inward eye' because I know what he means, and also how pleasant it is to just walk (I can't wait for the Heidelberg conference to put on some hiking boots and just taking off into the German hills... who cares about academics when you've got trees and flowers).

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Now, of course, having been to Egypt a handful of times (I can't wait to go again, but I'm saving up so I can stay for a couple of weeks after they open the new museum in Gizah - ooh, think of all the forgotten treasures that re-appear from the vaults of the old museum in Cairo once they start transporting stuff! So little of it has actually been catalogued back then! - and also so I can visit Alexandria, where I've not been yet, and also maybe Deir el Medina because frankly, how can I have been in Luxor twice and not have visited Deir el Medina?!) I picture the plateau behind the Gizah pyramids for desert - I love the desert - and I'm also slightly in love with the tyrannical arrogance of 'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' because I love villains (even though Rameses the Great was far from being an actual villain in real life). So yeah. 

My last favourite is just arguably the most famous Dutch poem ever (except for maybe Mei by Gorter: Een nieuwe lente, een nieuw geluid, ik wil dat dit lied klinkt als het gefluit... but no one ever knows more), Herinnering aan Holland by Marsman. 

Herinnering aan Holland

Denkend aan Holland
zie ik breede rivieren
traag door oneindig
laagland gaan,
rijen ondenkbaar
ijle populieren
als hooge pluimen
aan den einder staan;
en in de geweldige
ruimte verzonken
de boerderijen
verspreid door het land,
boomgroepen, dorpen,
geknotte torens,
kerken en olmen
in een grootsch verband.
de lucht hangt er laag
en de zon wordt er langzaam
in grijze veelkleurige
dampen gesmoord,
en in alle gewesten
wordt de stem van het water
met zijn eeuwige rampen
gevreesd en gehoord.

Loosely translated it becomes

Memory of Holland

Thinking of Holland

I see wide rivers 

Flow through
Endless lowland,

Rows unthinkably
Thin poplars
Like plumes stand
On the horizon,

And sunk into
The vast space

The farmsteads

Spread across the land,

Copses, villages,

Pollarded towers,

Churches and elms,

In a grand unity.

The clouds are low
And the sun is slowly
Smothered in gray 

Colourful fumes,

And in all provinces
Is the call of the water
Of eternal disasters
Feared and heard.

That concludes my set of poems for now. Maybe I'll post some poems of my own in the future. I'm off to bed now, though, so maybe a little Christian, Dutch, rhyme that I gleaned from one of my mum's childhood books that, despite me not being religious, I still find very charming and sweet:

Ik ga slapen, ik ben moe

'k Sluit mijn beide oogjes toe

Heere houdt ook deze nacht
Over mij getrouw de wacht

Zorg voor de arme kind'ren Heer

En herstel de zieken weer
Ja voor alle mensen 'saam

Bid ik u in Jezus' naam