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Sunday, May 04, 2008

A Sunday Poem

A NOTE

Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain
from everything it's not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a converstation held
with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumple on a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing
something important.


Wislawa Syzymborska

Translated from the Polish by Stansilaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanaugh

9 comments:

*PG-13 said...

OMG! An answer to a prayer.. Thank you Ann!!!!!

Churadogs said...

What? A poem? Yoiks! There's a gazillion of them in the library. Free, too!

Bev. De Witt-Moylan said...

The poem below is not original. At least not to me. I don't remember the poet's name, but it is among my favorites. It came to me after spending most of the day at the water board meeting.

"As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish to God he's go away."

Bev. De Witt-Moylan said...

Typo, sorry Ann...
"I wish to God he'd go away."

"As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish to God he'd go away."

Churadogs said...

Bev sez:" I don't remember the poet's name, but it is among my favorites. It came to me after spending most of the day at the water board meeting.

"As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish to God he'd go away."

Hahahahah. Yeah, can't remember who wrote that. Should probably go to Ask.com and type in a few of the lines, I'm sure it'll come up. But, yes, how Waterboardish -- the man who wasn't there. . . again.

Churadogs said...

Went to Ask.com and here it is:

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away

Hugh Means (1875 - 1965)

God Bless The Internet!

Bev. De Witt-Moylan said...

My curiosity got the better of my lassitude, and so I went hunting for the version of the Hugh Means poem I remembered. In a paraphrase assigned to "Anonymous" I found it in a Houghton Mifflin high school textbook titled DESIGNS FOR READING POEMS by Carol Marshall/John Myers 1969 p.128.

In that book the poem is rendered thus:

A CASE
Anonymous

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today -
I wish to God he'd go away.

While fully appreciating its true origins, Ann, I must assert that the more emphatic bogus version more aptly captures the moment.

Churadogs said...

Bev sez:"While fully appreciating its true origins, Ann, I must assert that the more emphatic bogus version more aptly captures the moment."

Indeed it does, and that raises an interesting question. That famous poem, "When I am an old woman I shall wear a red hat . . ." and so forth, has appeared in about a gazillion different forms and is claimed by various people including Anonymous. And the verses change with each version.

Clearly, when we see poems, I guess we gotta ask: Which Version is the "real one." Things get weirder still in translations. with the peoms coming out different, depending on who's translating.

Wonder which verson of this poem is "real." Hmmmmm

*PG-13 said...

> Things get weirder still in translations. with the peoms coming out different, depending on who's translating.

Having little to do with previous entries in this thread ...... I simply wanted to share this: Esther Ofarim - Kinderspiele">

Whenever meetings grow long and people get weird and things are generally going to H*** I hum this little ditty. It settles everything right down. You don't have to speak German or even understand the song. The words and the music transcend such detail. I suggest listening to it first. Creating your own image and meaning. And only then - if you really must - check out an English translation here.

Esther actually makes German sound beautiful. That's not easy to do ;-)
(See the original German here.)

Enjoy.