[The next in my series of translations from Blaise Cendrars’ Deux-Neuf poèmes élastiques (19 Elastic Poems)]
My Dance
Plato doesn’t grant citizenship to the poet
Wandering Jew
Metaphysical Don Juan
Friends, kindred
You have no more customs and no habits yet
You have to escape the magazines’ tyranny
Literature
Impoverished life
Misplaced pride
Mask
Woman, the dance Nietzsche wished us to learn to dance
Woman
But irony?
Continual coming and going
Special vagrancy
All men, all lands
That’s how you’re no longer a burden
You no longer sense yourself
I’m a gentleman who crosses always the same Europes
in fabulous express trains and looks disheartened
out the window
The landscape doesn’t interest me
But the landscape’s dance
The landscape’s dance
Landscape-dance
Paritatitata
I’m all-turning
Blaise Cendrars
Translation Jack Hayes © 1990-present
I really liked this, John! Your translations are always really accessible and enjoyable to read - even for someone not too familiar with the poets. I particularly liked the "paritatitata".
ReplyDeleteI also like the way the translation often inverts the verb and the adjective, giving it a certain elegance (for my ear, anyway).
Kat
Hi Kat: Thanks! As I recall, "paritatitata" is an untranslatable portmanteau word of Cendrars--but I don't have the original right here handy. Like your new avatar pic btw!
ReplyDeleteInteresting poem by an interesting poet I should know more about- it got me googling. Thanks for translating it.
ReplyDeleteHi Dominic: Glad this piqued your interest in Cendrars. Dick Jones of Patteran Pages has also translated Cendrars; my versions of 19 Elastic Poems post every other Saturday here.
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