The text below is a translation of a poem "Do Tadeusza Różewicza, poety" by a Nobel-Prize winning poet, Czesław Miłosz.
The original Polish version of the poem was retrieved from: http://goo.gl/I6joob.
When the poet enters the garden of Earth.
Four hundred pale blue rivers worked
For his birth and a silkworm
Built for him its glittering nests.
Piratical fly's wing, butterfly's muzzle
Were formed for his benefit
And a multi-storey mansion of lupine
Lightened the night to him at the field's verge.
So all instruments are rejoicing
Closed within boxes and pitchers of green
Waiting for his touch to make them sound.
Glory to the side of the World which brings forth a poet!
This message runs on the coastal waters
Where seagulls float asleep through the mists
And further, where ships ascend and descend.
This message runs beneath the mountain moon
And shows the poet at the table
In a cold room, in a little-known city,
When the clock on the tower chimes the hour.
He finds home in a pine-needle, in a deer's cry,
In a stellar explosion and inside of human hand.
The clock does not measure his song. The echo
Like the antiquity of the sea within a shell
Never falls silent. He lasts. And mighty
Is his whisper pillaring the people.
Fortunate is the nation which has a poet
And through its toil does not walk in silence.
Only the rhetoricians do not like the poet.
Sitting on glass chairs they unfurl
Long rolls, metres of nobility.
And all around rings the poet's laughter
And his life which has no end.
Angry they are. Aware that their chairs will break
And where they sat there will not grow
A single blade of grass. Circle of burnt sulphur,
Red, arid dust an ant will pass.
Poetry by Galahad
Read 498 times
Written on 2014-12-14 at 23:01
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The original Polish version of the poem was retrieved from: http://goo.gl/I6joob.
To Tadeusz Różewicz, The Poet (Translation of a poem by Czesław Miłosz)
United are all instruments in rejoicingWhen the poet enters the garden of Earth.
Four hundred pale blue rivers worked
For his birth and a silkworm
Built for him its glittering nests.
Piratical fly's wing, butterfly's muzzle
Were formed for his benefit
And a multi-storey mansion of lupine
Lightened the night to him at the field's verge.
So all instruments are rejoicing
Closed within boxes and pitchers of green
Waiting for his touch to make them sound.
Glory to the side of the World which brings forth a poet!
This message runs on the coastal waters
Where seagulls float asleep through the mists
And further, where ships ascend and descend.
This message runs beneath the mountain moon
And shows the poet at the table
In a cold room, in a little-known city,
When the clock on the tower chimes the hour.
He finds home in a pine-needle, in a deer's cry,
In a stellar explosion and inside of human hand.
The clock does not measure his song. The echo
Like the antiquity of the sea within a shell
Never falls silent. He lasts. And mighty
Is his whisper pillaring the people.
Fortunate is the nation which has a poet
And through its toil does not walk in silence.
Only the rhetoricians do not like the poet.
Sitting on glass chairs they unfurl
Long rolls, metres of nobility.
And all around rings the poet's laughter
And his life which has no end.
Angry they are. Aware that their chairs will break
And where they sat there will not grow
A single blade of grass. Circle of burnt sulphur,
Red, arid dust an ant will pass.
Poetry by Galahad
Read 498 times
Written on 2014-12-14 at 23:01
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
