Correspondence

At the office all the morning, Sir W. Batten, Sir W. Pen, and I about the Victualler’s accounts. Then home to dinner and to the office again all the afternoon, Mr. Hater and I writing over my Alphabet fair, in which I took great pleasure to rule the lines and to have the capitall words wrote with red ink. So home and to supper. This evening Savill the Paynter came and did varnish over my wife’s picture and mine, and I paid him for my little picture 3l., and so am clear with him. So after supper to bed.
This day I had a letter from my father that he is got down well, and found my mother pretty well again. So that I am vexed with all my heart at Pall for writing to him so much concerning my mother’s illness (which I believe was not so great), so that he should be forced to hasten down on the sudden back into the country without taking leave, or having any pleasure here.

with red ink
this evening came
a letter from my own heart

writing in illness
that sudden back-country
without any pleasure


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 11 June 1662.

Society Rag

Black mustaches, black cravats,
suits patterned after leopard-skin
and lined in golden silk. When
the Northern flickers fledge, they
dress in flashy uniforms, band
performance and they all play
drums, take deep-sweep bows
mid-flight, shout wacka-wacka!

The pileated’s a traditionalist,
still wears a scarlet cap with
matching chin-strap, formal
suit in black with gleaming white
lapels. Grand and grandiose,
but filled with noblesse oblige,
he leaves his older dwelling to be
leased by lady wood duck, she
needs the lofty safety to incubate
her clutch, but doesn’t have
the beak for excavation.

She has a yellow-bellied neighbor,
but he rarely disturbs her with his
intermittent mews. His work’s
sporadic, an arrhythmia induced
by breaks for sips, he’s always
in his cups, so much he wears a bib —
and also a red cap, but beyond
that, he doesn’t match: checked
coat atop a khaki-yellow shirt.

For fashion trends, you have
to look to red-heads — him or her,
they are identical in style, same
haut designer fond of high-gloss
color-block. Or, for a bit of modern
flare that’s such a daring statement
it’s hard to tell if it is fashion or
rebellion: check out the red-bellied,
rose tattoo bare beneath slick
zebra jacket, Manic Panic hair.

And finally, there’s those cousins —
brothers? — Hairy, Downy, not so
flashy, not quite twins. Hard to tell
who’s who among them, they have
costumed up, them and their ladies,
as Pierrot and Pirouette, the men show
but a single patch of red upon their
heads, and even that is in the back:
if you should surprise one playing
the catalpa, it will turn to face you,
freeze — and if you blink, without that
red as evidence of its existence, it
blends in and vanishes completely.

All you have left is speculation as
to if it’s gone or present. Just like
the legendary uncle of his pileated
nibs, the ivory-billed enigma, holy
grail of ornithology, rumored, sought,
and sightings not believed. But still
remains the inconclusiveness,
the hope, the lurking question:

Is absence of evidence
evidence of absence?


In response to, and ending with a line from, The Morning Porch.

Economizing measures

At the office all the morning, much business; and great hopes of bringing things, by Mr. Coventry’s means, to a good condition in the office. Dined at home, Mr. Hunt with us; to the office again in the afternoon, but not meeting, as was intended, I went to my brothers and bookseller’s, and other places about business, and paid off all for books to this day, and do not intend to buy any more of any kind a good while, though I had a great mind to have bought the King’s works, as they are new printed in folio, and present it to my Lord; but I think it will be best to save the money.
So home and to bed.

I bring things to hunt,
meet others
in books
and tend a mind
printed in ink
to save money.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 10 June 1662.

Arguments with destiny: 11

“…and the road I still
hanker after.” ~ D. Bonta

When the woman said Isn’t it enough,
what else do you need to prove?

When the question, thinly disguised,
was code for You should have stayed
in your place.

When some colleagues stopped
speaking to her for years,

and some fed their kind
of fuel to the rumor
machine.

When sparks filled the frame,
she hitched the bar just a bit higher.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Thinned.

Five translators, one poem: dreaming about caimans with José Santos Chocano

This entry is part 6 of 38 in the series Poetry from the Other Americas

 

José Santos Chocano and his amazing mustacheThe Peruvian poet José Santos Chocano (1875-1934) is of some considerable historical importance, I gather, as the first Latin American modernist poet to turn away from French models and embrace native and mestizo themes. A badass who spent time in prison for killing another poet and died in a knife fight in Chile, he wrote poetry of place long before it was fashionable, and played a huge role in starting the tradition of Latin American writers embracing anti-imperialist politics. Today, however, he is mostly remembered for a poem about a caiman. A 2001 Mexican gangster film even took its title from the poem, El sueño del caimán.

Written in 1906, the poem conjures up an almost steam-punk leviathan, with language as lush and grandiloquent as anything of Darío’s—but there are enough true-to-life details to make me think that the poet had actually observed caimans in the wild, which is a lot more than I’d say about Darío and swans. The poem is difficult for someone with intermediate-level Spanish like me, using some fairly obscure vocabulary and being deliberately vague on a couple of points (such as: Whose dream is it, the poet’s or the caiman’s? And what exactly do the adjectives in line 11 modify?) so yesterday morning I turned to my friends for help, posting a tentative translation to Facebook along with the original. The resulting discussion was lively, with too many participants to name, but Luis Andrade was especially helpful, along with the poets who, much to my surprise and pleasure, each tried their hand at a translation and gave me permission to share them all here. It turned into a really fun exercise, and the results go to show — in case anyone needs convincing — that there’s no such thing as a definitive translation.

Since we all read and were influenced by each others’ translations and comments, I’ve decided to post these in the order of their last posted edit. This means that my own effort will bring up the rear, because this morning I had to have just one more go. I’m not going to post bios, but simply link names to blogs, websites, or Facebook pages. But first, the original poem:


El sueño del caimán

Enorme tronco que arrastró la ola,
yace el caimán varado en la ribera;
espinazo de abrupta cordillera,
fauces de abismo y formidable cola.

El sol lo envuelve en fúlgida aureola;
y parece lucir cota y cimera,
cual monstruo de metal que reverbera
y que al reverberar se tornasola.

Inmóvil como un ídolo sagrado,
ceñido en mallas de compacto acero,
está ante el agua estático y sombrío,

a manera de un príncipe encantado
que vive eternamente prisionero
en el palacio de cristal de un río.

(1906)

*

Dream of the Caiman
translated by Dale Favier

Enormous log dragged by the wave—
caiman beached on the river shore:
backbone a broken cordillera,
formidable tail, jaws an abyss.

The sun wraps him in a dazzling aureole—
a seeming mail-coat and heraldry,
a metal monster who shimmers
and whose shimmering lays a sheen.

Unmoving as a sacred idol
girt in a mesh of compact steel,
he lies against the still, dark water

like an enchanted prince
who lives an eternal prisoner
of the river’s palace of glass.

*

Caiman Dream
translated by Caitlin Gildrien

A great log, hurled by waves
ashore, the caiman lies stranded:
spine of jagged mountains,
an abyss in its jaws, the fearful tail.

The sun drapes it in brilliance,
shining like an armored knight,
this plated beast whose thrum
and glare shimmer the air.

Steady as a sacred idol,
girded tight in mail and chain,
he waits by the water, still and grim,

a prince, enchanted,
imprisoned now forever
in the limpid palace of the tide.

*

Cayman Dream
translated by Luisa A. Igloria

Trunk felled by an enormous wave,
the alligator lies stranded on the shore;
jagged cordillera for backbone and spoor,
jaws an abyss, formidable tail.

Bronzed by the sun’s resplendent aura;
and it is knighted, superior,
leviathan plated in metal that,
trembled, turns iridescent.

Unmoving as a sacred idol,
cinctured in a mesh of steel
against the water’s static umber,

enchanted prince disguised,
prisoner who dwells forever
in the river’s glass palace.

*

Dream of a Caiman
translated by Jean Morris

A great trunk dragged here by the current
The caiman lies beached on the river bank
Backbone like a rugged mountain range
Cavernous jaws and formidable tail

Haloed by the dazzling sun
How resplendently crested and armoured he seems
A reflective metal monster
Whose reflection casts an iridescent sheen

Unmoving as a venerated idol
Encased in dense links of steel
Outlined against the water, sombre and transfixed

Like some enchanted prince
Held prisoner for ever
In the river’s crystal palace

*

Dream of the Caiman
translated by Dave Bonta

Huge tree trunk dragged by a wave
and washed up on the bank, the caiman lies:
sudden spine of mountains,
chasm of a maw and formidable tail.

The sun envelops it in a replendent aura
until it seems to don armor and visor—
a beast of metal whose reflective glare
shimmers to a glossy sheen.

Motionless as a sacred idol,
swaddled in mesh of strong steel,
it faces the dark, unchanging waters

like an enchanted prince
who lives eternally captive
to the river’s palace of glass.

Arguments with destiny: 10

“I would go be the enemy
for an afternoon.” ~ D. Bonta

What I learn of fruition
drops from the barren tree;

and what I glean of hunger is
its wild sound, wind that ratchets

through the hollows. Bound
pages of books fall open

to show me how much
there is still to study—

But they could not press
the moon’s cold wafer thinner,

they could not make its shine
more lustrous than a pearl.

Where I bend my head, the lamp’s
bright aura is momentarily

interrupted: my shadow falling on fields
where letters notch small, serifed wings.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Tin soldier.

New neighbor

Early up and at the office with Mr. Hater, making my alphabet of contracts, upon the dispatch of which I am now very intent, for that I am resolved much to enquire into the price of commodities.
Dined at home, and after dinner to Greatorex’s, and with him and another stranger to the Tavern, but I drank no wine. He recommended Bond, of our end of the town, to teach me to measure timber, and some other things that I would learn, in order to my office. Thence back again to the office, and there T. Hater and I did make an end of my alphabet, which did much please me. So home to supper and to bed.

with my alphabet of commodities and Xs
a stranger in town

teach me some other
things to hate


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 9 June 1662.

Arguments with destiny: 9

“I am the parrot
brought from the sea:” ~ D. Bonta

What are you?

A bridge made through its making,
a sorrow sewn for wings.

A meal composed of fragments,
a vineyard thick with remaindered fruit.

A letter that circumnavigated the globe
to recall what it wanted to say.

A body ordered to leave at the same time
it’s pushed to the ground.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Poet in public.

Poet in public

(Lord’s day). Lay till church-time in bed, and so up and to church, and there I found Mr. Mills come home out of the country again, and preached but a lazy sermon. Home and dined with my wife, and so to church again with her.
Thence walked to my Lady’s, and there supped with her, and merry, among other things, with the parrott which my Lord hath brought from the sea, which speaks very well, and cries Pall so pleasantly, that made my Lord give it my Lady Paulina; but my Lady, her mother, do not like it.
Home, and observe my man Will to walk with his cloak flung over his shoulder, like a Ruffian, which, whether it was that he might not be seen to walk along with the footboy, I know not, but I was vexed at it; and coming home, and after prayers, I did ask him where he learned that immodest garb, and he answered me that it was not immodest, or some such slight answer, at which I did give him two boxes on the ears, which I never did before, and so was after a little troubled at it.

I am the parrot
brought from the sea:
I speak like a ruffian
to the light.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 8 June 1662.

Rosetta

Only a purple line, a single stroke,
sweep of frictionless calligraphy divides
the night from day, the land from sky.

Each morning, you inscribe the message
left before your door, decipher what’s
been written in the avian, depicted

in the characters of birds: swallows hawk
insects in invisible script, graceful swirls
of Arabic. Downy woodpeckers: steady Morse.

Last night, tornado warnings.
Today, a single trumpeter swan
flies south against the wind.


After The Morning Porch: May 28, May 30, & May 31.