Anonymous - Ancient Egypt

This is another of the poems translated into English by Ezra Pound and Noel Stock from Italian text translated, in turn, from hieroglyphic texts dating from between 1567 B.C. to 1085 B.C.). The Italian version is called "Liriche Amorose Degli Antichi Egizioni" (Milan, 1957).  Though the author will never be known, her sentiments are timeless and fresh across three millennia.  The plainness of the images reminds me of Archibald Macleish’s poem (also posted) to his wife.

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Untitled

                    Transl. By Ezra Pound and Noel Stock

I find my love fishing

His feet in the shallows.

We have breakfast together

And drink beer.

I offer him the magic of my thighs

He is caught in the spell.

When I Think About Why - Anonymous, Korean

"Anonymous" has always been a prolific author across the centuries.... This one is from 16th century Korea.  Given how hand fans were used by both men and women, one should pause before assuming it's a woman speaking.  That ambiguity is one reason I like it.  The other is how it says so much in so few words and uses very simple imagery to speak about so much.  (Think about all the questions you have after reading!)  And it has that wistful melancholy that is very Asian and familiar (to me).

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When I Think About Why

                                                   transl. V O. Baron and Chung Seuk Park

When I think about why

You sent that fan to me,

I wonder if you meant

For me to blow out the fire in my heart.

How could I put out a fire with a fan

When teardrops failed?

                                                Anonymous – 16^th Century  Korean

Nineteen Ancient Poems - #2 - Anonymous (Chinese)

 The "Nineteen Ancient Poems" are the earliest extant poems in the five-character meter that was the longest lasting form of Chinese poetry.  They date back almost 2000 years, author(s) unknown.  Translations, as I keep repeating, are - at best - like seeing an object through a prism, at least in terms of getting at the essence of the original.  There have been different schools of thought about translating from the Chinese, from rhyming and meter schemes that simulated and emulated the original, to the one below, which attempts to capture some of the rhythm and sing-song repetition in the original.  Over the years, my yard-stick is whether it conveys the overall atmosphere and tone by which our emotional reaction is created.  For me, this one succeeds and that's why it's included: that sorrow and moodiness of a loss observed and felt is a theme that recurs in later Chinese poetry.  Remember: this was written almost 2000 years ago....

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Nineteen Ancient Poems - #2

Green, so green is the river grass,

thick so thick are the garden willow’s leaves.

Beautiful, so beautiful is the lady upstairs.,

shining as she stands by the window, shining.

Pretty in her powdered rouge, so pretty

with her slender, slender white hands.

Once she was a singing girl,

but now is the wife of a womanizer.

He travels but rarely comes home.

So hard to sleep in an empty bed.

                                Anonymous – Chinese, Han Dynasty, 206 BCE – 220 CE

Oxaitoq's Song - Anonymous Inuit

As I have noted with other selections, one of the great pleasures of reading poetry from other cultures and times is the universality of the emotions.  This anonymous song from the 1890s comes from the Inuit, the indigenous people of the Arctic and sub-Arctic areas of northern Canada, Alaska, and Greenland.  And it is just marvelous: short and pithy, yet emotionally translatable to any language.  It's stripped to the essential and exposing despair, sadness, dejection, truth, and just a hint of bitterness and anger.  And remember that, as the sea in those parts is the provider of sustenance and life, physically "..walking inland..." is heading away from it, to death.  In this case, she has driven him to emotional suicide.  And how familiar is that to those who have loved?
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Oxaitoq’s Song

Walking inland, inland, inland,

I am walking inland.

Nobody loves me, she least of all, so I walk inland.

She has loved only for the things I bring.

She has loved only for the food I bring.

                                                                             Anonymous - Inuit

Anonymous (Japanese - 10th Century)

The only thing I learned from a college philosophy course was something from Ludwig Wittgenstein which I always paraphrase as: "If you have nothing to say, shut up".  (The actual quote is : "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.")   That applies to commenting on today's poem:
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Anonymous - Japanese  10th Century

Early morning glows

in the faint shimmer

of first light.

Chocked with sadness,

I help you into your clothes.

Anonymous - Ancient Egypt

I mentioned in an earlier entry that I am interested in how different cultures and times wrote about the theme of this blog. Here are poems translated into English by Ezra Pound and Noel Stock from Italian text translated, in turn,from hieroglyphic texts dating from between 1567 B.C. to 1085 B.C.). The Italian version is called "Liriche Amorose Degli Antichi Egizioni" (Milan, 1957).
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II
Nothing, nothing can keep me away from my love
Standing on the other shore.
Not even old crocodile
There on the sandbank between us
Can keep us apart.
I go in spite of him,
I walk upon the waves,
Her love flows back across the water,
Turning waves to solid earth
For me to walk on.
The river is our Enchanted Sea.

III
To have seen her
To have seen her approaching
Such beauty is
Joy in my heart forever.
Nor time eternal take back
What she has brought to me.

IV
When she welcomes me
Arms open wide
I feel as some traveler returning
From the far land of Punt.
All things change; the mind, the senses,
Into perfume rich and strange.
And when parts her lips to kiss
My head is light, I am drunk without beer.

                                                                                                        Anonymous - Ancient Egypt

Ballad of My Beautiful Lady

One reason I read poetry from other periods and countries is to have an affirmation that human emotions are universal across time and cultures.  And to see whether the expressions by poets of that era and place "hold" across those distances.   Reading this one, I try to remember that it was a popular love verse in the time of Colombus, and note that the victory of Christian Spain over Moorish Spain was still very recent.  Distilled to the essence: the heart wants what it wants and accepts no substitutes, and that was true then, now, and for as long as humans exist.
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 Ballad of My Beautiful Lady

“My friend, my friend,
my beautiful lady married today,
she married a country peasant,
which caused me the most pain.
I think I shall become a Moor,
and abide by Moorish ways:
any Christian that I may see,
his life I’ll take away.”
“Don’t do it, my friend,
don’t lead your life astray,
of three sisters that I have,
I shall give you the most fair,
if you want her for a wife,
if you want her for your lady.”
“I  don't want her for a wife,
nor want her for a lady,
since I could not enjoy,
the one I lost today.”
                                                                             Anon. - Spain (before 1500)