Amour et Oubli - Love and Forgetting
Dans la nuit, étoiles scintillent,
In the night, stars softly glisten,
Amour fugace, doux et brillant,
Fleeting love, tender and radiant.
Souvenirs s'effacent à l'aube,
Memories fade at dawn's light,
Dans nos cœurs, l'amour s'évapore,
In our hearts, love takes its flight.
1 note
·
View note
Talkin’ to Fridita
Estoy triste. Pero también content. Viva y agradecida.
I just want to be seen. Estoy cansada de sonreir, por quedar bien.
De hablar sin sentido, por quedar bien.
De intentar encajar, cuando no encajo. Ni encajaré. Ni quiero encajar.
I have the birthright to be myself. To be who I am.
I won't dim my light, my uniqueness—to make others feel comfortable.
I shall love myself. See myself.
The beauty. The variety of my being. La forma única en la que existo.
No me voy a asfixiar por esta sociedad.
Por los miedos. Por la falta de sensibilidad. No.
Voy a levantarme.
Con fuerza.
Confident.
Plantada en esta tierra, hasta lo más profundo de mis raíces.
I will take as much space as I need to.
To grow.
To flourish.
- De La Isla
0 notes
𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐋 . Your highly sensitivity it's your personal treasury 💎🗝 . ~ @kath_reee_nnaa ~ . Protect and share this unique gift. You know that you are different, cause you uncover the veil of this world. Don't give up! Be brave! Your authenticity attracts those, who are meant for you. So be yourself more than ever. Because you are uniquely incredible! . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . Deine Hochsensitivität ist deine persönliche Schatzkammer 💎🗝 . ~ @kath_reee_nnaa ~ . Beschütze und teile diese einzigartige Gabe. Du weißt, dass du anders bist, da du die Schleier dieser Welt aufdeckst. Gib nicht auf! Sei mutig! Deine Authentizität zieht diejenigen an, die für dich bestimmt sind. Sei Du selbst, mehr denn je. Denn Du bist einzigartig unglaublich! . Deine unscheinbare Wegbereiterin Kathrin 💎🗝 . . #deeptalk #hochsensibel #poetsofinsta #mindsetmondays #thehigherself #sensitivebadass #gedankenwelt #bringersofthelight #empaths #traveldiary #shadowwork #achtsamkeit #qouteoftheday #loveandlight #wertschätzung #treasuryteam #authentisch #nosmalltalk #bilingualpoetry #awakenedwoman #meditation #spiritualknowledge #vacationgoals2019 #highlysensitivepeople #outdooradventures #authenticity #zitatezumnachdenken #jordantravel #hochsensitivität #stayandwonder (hier: The Treasury) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8Hpnc4INJe/?igshid=1wybbiwk862xa
0 notes
May Huang - Final Portfolio Excerpts
Introduction (abridged)
The bolded poems are the ones I will discuss today.
The nine poems I chose to translate for this portfolio reflect the ways I have been introduced to poetry, as well as the kind of poems that speak to me as a writer who is interested in work that is inherently ‘bilingual,’ influenced by both English and Chinese language and culture. The portfolio begins with classical poems that I read as a child and concludes with contemporary poems that I will likely encounter most in the future as I engage with Hong Kong’s contemporary literary landscape. In between are works that reveal literary exchange and influence transpiring between Chinese and English poetic traditions. The range of poems posed formal and stylistic challenges that deepened my understanding of translation—in theory and in practice.
The portfolio is organized somewhat chronologically: it begins with two classical Chinese poems from the Song Dynasty, “Staying in the Bo Xian Temple on a Snowy Night” by Su Shi (the one after which I was named) and Partridge Sky by Li Qingzhao. It then segues into “Waiting for you, in the rain” by Yu Guangzhong, a Taiwanese poet who studied in the U.S. and incorporated elements of Western poetry into Chinese poems written with a classical undercurrent.
The three pieces that follow were written by authors who were significantly influenced by the work of Western poets; Zhai Yongming was heavily influenced by Sylvia Plath, Zang Di wrote “The Society of Digging into Fresh Soil” as an elegy to Seamus Heaney, and Ya Xian wrote “Chicago” based on Carl Sandburg’s poem of the same name.
The next two translations are of Chinese poems that were written in Western forms, an Italian sonnet by Feng Zhi and a sestina by contemporary Hong Kong poet Zhong Guoqiang. I finally conclude the portfolio with “Mosquitoes,” another work by Zhong Guoqiang, ending on a note close to home.
_____________________________________________
1) 雪夜獨宿柏仙庵
蘇軾 晚雨纖纖變玉霙,小庵高臥有余清。 夢驚忽有穿窗片,夜靜惟聞瀉竹聲。 稍壓冬溫聊得健,未濡秋旱若為耕。 天公用意真難會,又作春風爛漫晴。
Staying in the Bo Xian Temple on a Snowy Night
Su Shi
Night rain turns into sleet, fine as jade
while pure winds blow on temples aloft
Suddenly, something pierces my window
mid-dream, startling me awake
Yet the only sound I hear in the quiet dark
Is the bamboo leaves’ quick cascade
Hardly past a winter cold myself,
how will fields recover from the autumn draught?
Heaven’s intents are hard to guess,
For soon again the spring breeze will blow
Color and brightness into our days.
2) The Society of Digging into Fresh Soil
Zang Di
—In Memoriam Seamus Heaney, 1939 – 2013
The Ireland I love. Far enough
But never foreign. Every time I dig up
the orchids of Ireland, my spade sinks
into fresh soil, finding beautiful strength
in lonely words. Deep green tips of leaves can sway
an attentive heart. How might the stamen, swaying in the
wind of our words, already the prisoner of poetry,
look upon human life?
Only the sweat of our brows can fill the pit
We dig into the ground. And in this age of hardship
only such a pit can deepen the trust between us.
So pick up the phone and ring up your reflections—
They have persisted for far too long
In the scenery of scenery. Love is ice.
If you do not believe me, give it a try.
The last day of August went by like an elephant.
Don’t look at me like that. I am now a blind man.
A bottom line like this needs a blind man like me.
Delmore Schwartz, after whom Bellow modeled
Humboldt in Humboldt’s Gift, once said, with much sorrow—
“For like a gun is touch.” The situation is indeed grim but you,
who persisted in opening the forge’s oily shop curtain,
taught me to strike like the hammer, to trust every touch.
3) Sonnet 25
Example of 1st stanza:
案頭擺設著用具, 架上陳列著書籍, 終日在些靜物裡 我們不住地思慮;
Àn tóu bǎi shè zhe yòng jù,
jià shàng chén liè zhe shū jí,
zhōng rì zài xiē jìng wù li
wǒ men bù zhù dì sī lǜ;
Tools placed on a table top,
Rows of books arranged on shelves,
Such still life around ourselves
All day long lost in thought;
Speaking voices do not sing ,
Routine motions do not flow;
Blankly ask how birds should know
To soar by flapping wings.
Only in the still of night
Will bodies breathe meter and rhyme,
Feel the air at play inside,
Salt water play with blood inside—
And maybe hear, in a dream,
The sky and sea calling out our names?
4) Mosquitoes
I don’t know when we began eating at the nearby restaurant
not wanting to trouble mother on New Year’s and other family gatherings
until the time we spent in the old house grew shorter
and the mosquitoes swarming in from all directions grew fiercer,
forming a herd, ready to risk everything, so close I could see the space
between their fuzzy antenna
and empty stomachs
I slap, slap the empty air without pause. Mother goes about
her daily chores, utterly indifferent to the house full of mosquitoes
About time to go, mother. Massaging her belly, she walks out
and says no, face dimmed by lamplight, because of an upset stomach
Perhaps because, seeing the white hair on her temples, she ate
some of the vermicelli left out since breakfast this afternoon
Why wasn’t it warm why didn’t we microwave it before she took a bite?
Mother stayed home on the night of the winter solstice, refusing our company
I saw a sky of mosquitoes slowly, slowly land on walls of the old house,
the kitchen counter, the chairs, the desks, the cups, the bowls, the chopsticks…
Time belongs to them, now. Over the phone, father says don’t worry,
Mother is asleep, and my head starts to ache on the West Rail Line
As if I were in the old house with mosquitos invading my skull over and over,
thin wings quivering at high frequency, piercing through a pain I had forgotten
案頭擺設著用具,
架上陳列著書籍,
終日在些靜物裡
我們不住地思慮;
0 notes