foreign and strangely speckled
– with feathers catching the sunlight
and warm vowels
An extra birthday celebration
But in the midst of that flock, one solitary
sparrow
one of the old faithful, you can hear him
squalling full-throated
Excessively
joyful or angrily cursing
doesn’t really matter
Carry on, sparrow!
(OG)
NORWEGIAN (ORIGINAL)
Velkomst
Og så er det stær
plutselig
Den store eika full av stær
Byens terminal
Verdensvant gebrokkent,
Spraglete utenlandsk og fremmed nå
– med sol i fjærene
med varme vokaler
En fødselsdag på si
Men midt i skokken en enslig
spurv
av de trofaste gamle, for full
og skrålende hals
Overstadig
begeistret eller fly forbanna
kan være det samme
Heia spurven!
SHETLANDIC
Robin
Yallow-trappled warbler,
gairden warbler, mavis,
jaunty blackie, spricklit
stirleen an snappy flycatcher; a chorus,
a cabbi-labbi, a yallicrack,
an if truth be telt, kinda lippened
dis filsket scriechin, dis slippit onkerry,
while we wait apö da cuckoo
i da trang haert o wir voar
noo an dan harkin
for da wheest whan der sittin
But suddenly der a vimmerin
a peerie mövment
i da bushes an trees,
aff a leg an on a leg
flittin fae branch ta twig ta spade-heft
ta mossy steyn,
apö meek fit,
apö cannie wing
An dan der robbie-redbreist,
red-trapplt, come
back again,
flitterin peerie-wyes
fae branch ta branch
his wine-red flag, wan laef
fae da hidmist hairst, liftit
bi a baff o wind, a brave haert
in sherry-coloured breist, an dat
pricks oot unseen boondaries
rings his hametoon
o wheest.
Ta ken, aal o a sudden,
dat hit wis dis, jöst
dis we waitit apön
robin, inklin
Robin, robbie-redbreist
i da callyshang o coortin,
Amontillado-breistit,
a banner flittin peerie-wyes
trig-lik an half-hoidin him
atween branches, aald
laefs, new buds
tracin his territory
o silence;
wan mintie, first
sure
inklin o voar
(CDL)
ENGLISH (BRIDGE)
Robin
Icterine warbler,
garden warbler, song thrush,
sanguine blackbird, speckled
starling and snappy flycatcher; a chorus
of perplexed polyphony,
and truth be told rather trite
this pubertal roaring of the senses,
while we wait to hear the cuckoo
in the midst of our busy spring gardening
sporadically listening
for the quiet
when they’re brooding
But suddenly there’s a light
motion, a gentle movement
in the bushes and thicket,
cautious shifts
from branch to twig to the handle of
the shovel to a mossy stone,
on meek feet, on
wary wings
And then there is robin,
red-throated, returned,
quietly moving
from branch to branch
its wine-red flag, one leaf
from last fall lifted
by a wind gust, and this brave heart
in its sherry-coloured breast, who
stakes out the invisible boundary
around its domain
of silence.
To know, suddenly,
that it was this, just
this we waited for
robin, sign
Robin, red-throat
in the midst of the noisy nesting season,
Amontillado-breasted,
a banner carefully and
precisely moved, discreetly
between branches, old
leaves, new buds
tracing up its territory
of silence;
one small, the very first
reliable
sign of spring
(OG)
NORWEGIAN (ORIGINAL)
Rødstrupe
(Erithacus Dandalus rubecula)
Gulsanger,
hagesanger, måltrost,
sangvinske svarttrost, spraglete
stær og fluesnapperen; et kor,
en fortumlet polyfoni,
temmelig fortersket, sant å si,
det pubertale bruset i sansene,
mens vi venter på gjøken
midt i onnestria,
og sporadisk lytter
etter rugestillheten
Men plutselig, en lett
rørelse, en nett bevegelse
under busk og kratt,
forsiktige
flytt fra gren til kvist til spadeskaft
til mosesten,
på saktmodig fot,
på varlig vinge
Og så er det robin,
tilbake
og forflytter lydløst
fra gren til gren
sit vinrøde flagg, et løv
fra i fjor, løftet omkring
av vindblaff, et modig hjerte
i sherryfarget bryst, og som
prikler ut usynlig stakitt,
ringer inn sitt rom
av stillhet.
Vite, plutselig,
det var dette, bare
dette vi ventet på
rødstrupe, vink
Robin, rødstrupen
midt i hekkelarmen,
amontilladobryst,
en vimpel forsiktig,
avmålt forflyttet, diskret
mellom grener, gammelt
løvverk, nye knopper
stipler opp sitt revir
av stillhet;
et lite, det første
tilforlatelige
vink av vår
RĀBI(AH AL-BAȘRĪ
In a version by Clare Pollard
Rābi(ah al-Bașrī was an eighth-century Sufi mystic. Tradition has it that her caravan fell into the hands of robbers, who made her into a slave. She would perform her arduous tasks and then stay awake all night in prayer, and her master – on witnessing this – realized it was sacrilegious to keep her as his servant, and set her free. After this she became an ascetic, whose only possessions were a broken jug, a rush mat, and a brick she used as a pillow. She turned down numerous marriage offers, instead becoming a respected teacher with many disciples. Rābi(ah al-Bașrī is considered the first Sufi to have set down the doctrine of Divine Love.
I discovered a handful of her poems last year in the excellent Islamic Mystic Poetry (ed. Mahmood Jamal). I found them really compelling in their razor-sharp purity – my first thought was of Sappho or Emily Dickinson. And so, as usual these days, I began to trawl internet bookshops and blogs looking for more. Although she is highly respected in the Islamic world (she’s apparently been the subject of several movies in Turkey) the only other things that I could find in English were fragments – ra
ndom quotations, unaccredited (Google?) translations on new-age sites, etc. It soon became clear that she wrote nothing down, so all lines attributed to her are fragmentary and doubtful anyway, but many of the scraps still contained something so interesting that I collated them, and started work on these new versions. They reveal a side of Islamic culture very different to that portrayed by the western media – Rābi(ah al-Bașrī was a revered female philosopher and saint who, in direct contrast to fundamentalists, questioned everything.
Lines after Rābi(ah al-Bașrī
•
In love there is nothing
between heart and heart.
Words ache after truth.
Only tasting is knowing –
an explanation is a lie.
How can you describe
the thing that wipes you out
and is you
and tells you what to say?
•
If I bow because I fear hell,
burn me in hell
and if I pray for paradise,
lock the door of paradise
but if I love you for yourself,
let me look at you.
•
My soul is a shrine,
mosque or church
where I kneel
at a blank altar.
Love is the place
of powerlessness,
of blazing loss –
rapture pours into itself,
its own drain;
its wings beat me
brainless,
bodiless.
I am a shrine,
a mosque, a church
that dissolves, that
is eaten by
God.
•
In one hand, a flame,
in the other, water.
I am torching Heaven,
extinguishing Hell.
It is time to tear this veil down
and see the real God.
•
Take the badness
mixed up in this prayer –
•
Death is the most intimate act.
Knowing who I’ll kiss when it comes,
I consent to a thousand deaths.
•
Sisters,
I recommend reclusion.
With my beloved
I’m peaceful,
nothing human
can compare –
he is where I struggle
and turn
and if I die of desire
and have not satisfied
my love,
well, poor me –
he is the craving and the cure,
existence, ecstasy…
I’m shunning all
this being for
the melting point –
BHASKAR CHAKRABORTY
Translated by Manash ‘Firaq’ Bhattacharjee
Bhaskar Chakraborty is a poet who hears and writes silences. There is a ghostly ambience in his poems that reverberates with a strange depth, where the obscure is familiar and the familiar, obscure. Like almost all other poets from Calcutta, Bhaskar is a poet of the city, but unlike them, Bhaskar does not grapple with the sweat and toil, the hustle and bustle, of city life. He breathes and walks a different time, where the city is transported into memory. Calcutta is Bhaskar’s nostalgia and nightmare. The absence of sentimentality in the poems adds to the emotional maturity of the poet’s engagement with the city. Bhaskar is an imagist, and his poems constantly offer surprising and even shocking juxtapositions of imagery. It creates the strange ambience of his poems, where intimacy is often struck by unfamiliarity. His poems are also a constant conversation with death. It is crucial to read Bhaskar through the state of his illness, and the hallucinatory element it adds to his poetry.
Winter
Your hair is flying in the air – in your left hand you hold
Your telephone
In the light of winter, I have again come to your room
I see your cat; it isn’t as lithe as before –
The power of your fur; I see it go rolling – rolling
Beneath the tilted bed –
I sit quietly – your cat yawns quietly
The fountain of winter repeatedly calls us and recedes
From Life
I had no idea, life would end like this, be spoilt like this. On days only meant for roaming, I used to see the double-decker bus swimming and rushing through Calcutta – in parks and restaurants, boys and girls are floating and kissing each other. I had a colourful shirt in my boyhood. I had a river veiled from life that sang the song of eternal life. I used to think I had thousands of happy days – I used to think I wasn’t born to die just like that… Someone on top of the hill has rolled a huge stone down over my life… I now see from inside a broken train, black clouds have massed over my head, and water from that old river is crashing over the many boats tied to my bed – ‘Float, float, float away’ – as I return silently to my little house.
Illness
Did I desire the increasing presence of friends
By my bedside,
Ash falls from the cigarette at dawn
I need to do something
This lying and sitting down, this aimless wandering
Would it be good for me to move away
From a draught of wind
Did I want life to be ornate
From a dry window, the light of dawn is falling
On an empty pair of shoes
Did I want all that, brother
Did I want this
WANG WEI
Translated by Ned Denny
This remake of Wang Wei’s famous sequence of short poems was done several years ago as an experiment in what might be termed anagogic or hieroglyphic translation (by hieroglyphic I refer to the true function of sacred writing, whereby an image and its associations are allowed to resound in the mind – centrifugally but not arbitrarily – like the ripples of a stone thrown into a still pond). Another way of characterizing this approach would be to speak of an instinct for transcendence, something quite natural in people not subject to a process of systematic distraction. I made use of several English renderings – including G.W. Robinson’s excellent Penguin Classics version – and a poet’s audacious and perhaps unerring ignorance to produce something that may be closer ‘to the cosmic bone’, as Frank O’Hara said of Léger, than more correct versions. Or maybe not. The fidelity that concerned me was to what I feel and know and dream in my own bones, however obscurely, and also to the absolute solitude and perilous leisure that is both the curse and source of power of any genuine poet or free human being. My hope is that something of this perennial spirit, remote from both atheist and religious dogmas, has been evoked here. An occasional literary or cinematic allusion parallels the typical T’ang incorporation of fragments of classic poems, songs or chants, the one explicit borrowing being from Dylan Thomas’s ‘Poem On His Birthday’ (‘psilocybin’ in that same section referring to the liberty cap or magic mushroom, which fruits like the bramble in late summer and early autumn).
Wheel River
after Wang Wei
I
We have made our residence on the brink,
where the willow is living and dying.
Grave scholars who read us will never think
that the dead inherit everything.
II
Birds take themselves off into the stillness.
October glows as if painted on glass.
I stroll up the hill with my loneliness,
secure in the knowledge that nothing lasts.
III
The hazel’s lichen-freaked trunks are my walls.
My great leaf-roof whispers God’s hundredth name.
Alive in the woods, I cook up a storm
that will whirl to the cities. A real rain.
IV
Arterial trees reflecting in waters
hang downwards, suspended over a void:
we are dark heaven’s thin sons and daughters,
rooted in soil we strive to avoid.