Sir Edward Dyer's Love is Love

LOVE IS LOVE

The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,
The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat:
The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small,
And bees have stings, although they be not great;
Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs;
And love is love, in beggars and in kings.

Where waters smoothest run, there deepest are the fords,
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;
The firmest faith is found in fewest words,
The turtles do not sing, and yet they love;
True hearts have ears and eyes, no tongues to speak;
They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break.
____________________________
Sir Edward Dyer (c1543-1607)
Diplomat, poet and friend to Sir Philip Sidney (see next post below),
Sir Edward Dyer was one of John Betjeman's favourite poets.

My Muse, after Sir Philip Sidney

MY MUSE, an Elizabethan Sonnet

My Muse may well begrudge my heavenly joy,
If I still force her in sad rhymes to creep:
She often drank my tears, now hopes to enjoy
Nectar of mirth, since I Jove's cup do keep.
Sonnets are not bound apprenticed to annoy:
Trebles sing high, as well as bases deep:
Grief is but love's winter livery; the boy
Has cheeks to smile as well as eyes to weep.
Come then my Muse, show your height of delight
In well raised notes; my pen as best it may
Shall paint out joy, though but in black and white.
Cease, eager Muse; peace pen, for my sake stay;
I give you here my hand for truth of this,
Wise silence is best music unto bliss.
_____________________________________________________
Adapted from Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella

Our house divides the dead, by Thomas Bernhard

In a rural setting Thomas Bernhard spent many a grim winter in his sickbed listening to the howling wind or to the silence of the snow. In his poems sound is important. We may imagine him, between fits of coughing, listening to the suspicious creaks and groans of the old house; and to the birds he feared, the crows cawing in the trees; or maybe to the footsteps of a passer-by.
The following is a Poet-in-Residence translation of Thomas Bernhard's poem Unser Haus trennt die Toten.

OUR HOUSE DIVIDES THE DEAD
from sun and moon
and lets the grey flutes
spring apart along cold walls
and the lost summer's eyelids
freeze under the copper roof.
With the blackbird
the river groans, divides green from red
and snow from tears.
In midnight crows'-foot crushing wind
the flowers slumber
and under cobwebs
the laughter of the fattened pig.
Our house sends forth poisonous clouds
and fear to the forbidden towns.
Lying slaughtered
under the mouldy door
the poverty of my winter message.

____________________
25 Feb 2009 gw

Cut to the chase, Officer Delaney

Here's a dum-dum for these down-at-heel days,-

Cut to the chase, Officer Delaney

Officer Delaney
swings the baton
stands legs astride
and gazes
at the broken door

off the hinge
and open wide.

What have we here?
Delaney muses
and peers at Charlie
by the open gate.

Another break, Charlie says,
but good that you're here
to invest-
igate.

Delaney checks
the broken door,
- it's a serious crime
to be quite frank...

It's not my place
by the way, Charlie whispers,
It belongs to Buster
- or likely the bank.

Where's Buster now?
- Delaney's next question.

Upstairs on the bed,
- sleeping it off?

I'll knock him up,
says the dedicated cop
- arrest the felon
and make him cough.

Good luck to you
but I must dash,
- I got to find me
an eightball cue

and he pats the chalk
in his inside pocket
- strolls downtown,-

full of holes
are the soles
of his broken-down shoes.

-----------
24 Feb 2009

Georg Friedrich Handel's Partenope

Yesterday saw the premier of Partenope, Georg Friedrich Handel and Silvio Stampiglia's dramma per musica, in Vienna's Theater an der Wien.

The action takes place in and around the five-star Hollywood-style villa belonging to the unchaste but chaseable Partenope who is suitably armed with her playful whip. It's a kind of get-together party in which various sexual tastes appear to be subtly catered for. A couple of gate crashers turn up as is normal with these sorts of festivities. One, Rosmira, is disguised as a young man. She intends to spy on her lover Arsace. The other is Emilio from down the road. He thinks he fancies the lissom Partenope. Christophe Rousett and his baroque orchestra Les Talens Lyriques will more than ably supply the almost 4 hours of music to go along with all the fun and games.

In the sunny morning-after-the-night-before the guests wander around in beach robes and flipflops, toss plastic dolphins and beach balls into the sunshine. Partenope's personal lithe but well-muscled fitness trainer is on hand to provide gentle massage and stretching exercise. Loves arrows are pointing in several directions. Ormonde, Portenope's gay secretary, flits through the whole business with wonderful limp-wristed humour.

The plot quickly becomes a classic bedroom farce with lovers and potential lovers appearing and disappearing through the usual doors: Tell me dear heaven which of my lovers shall I leave?, I follow the ways of wild animals and know not the ways of love, and Terrible Cupid attacks us with lies! are the messages emerging from the degenerating party which rapidly degenerates into nothing less than a realistic War Games scenario; complete with fog of war, modern weaponry, camouflage gear, hooded and chained prisoners, and a final victory scene reminiscent of the raising of the American standard on Iwo Jima. The Partenope victory flag is a sheet of brown and black military camouflage material and is accompanied by the singing of Beloved walls we celebrate my victory!

In the third and final scene the local stud Emilio confidently rides off into the sunset on his silver and chrome deep-throated Harley motorcyle, not with Portenope as he had at first intended, but now with his new love Rosmira. Her manly disguise was uncovered during a boxing contest. The fate of the other lovers is left in the balance.

David Daniels counter-tenor, as the blundering hopeless torn-apart lover Arsace brings the house to a roar with his rendition of I go but without my heart. It's all a stark contrast to the computer controlled hydraulics of the bare concrete, brushed aluminium and polished teak of the playgirl's seaside villa.

Enthusiastic applause and seven or eight curtain calls. A marvellous and magical evening and a great way to mark Georg Friedrich Handel's birthday. The composer was born in Halle, Germany, 324 years ago today. By Georg, it was some party!

Christine Busta's Fragments of Origin

It is time in this series of translations to bring into English another side of Christine Busta. This poem Fragmente der Herkunft, is a poem in which she recalls her humble origins.

FRAGMENTS OF ORIGIN

I
My grandmother couldn't read or write
but she could sing lullabies
and tell stories to her nine children.
She laboured with pride between the urns
and the crowns of the poppies. Fog clad
she brought the crop in.

II
My mother was beautiful and vulnerable,
as a schoolgirl and a maid she was quick to learn.
She burned-up and went out like a poppy
in the meagre wistful land of her childhood
and became as bitter as the juniper.

III
From the silent forest my grandfather
brought granite, the firstborn stone.
I broke with the noisy city*,
silence, the firstborn word.

IV
My father is a silhouette:
blacksmith, metalworker, assiduous, mannish.
Fled from wedlock for the solitary life.
Last heard-of living in a hunting lodge.
His son, his half-sister's secret,
was for the inheritance first recorded.

-
*Busta suffered a nervous breakdown and broke with Vienna University after less than a year. The line probably recalls that experience.
_______________
Gwilym Williams
February 2009

Three winter haiku

This morning's almost daily run in the woods and the park brought forth the following haiku; no linking keyword this time but nevertheless worth recording.

a snowman
and a boy
two-up on a sledge

ski-tracks
enter the river
exit the other side

running home
through snowy landscape
oasis on the walkman

______________
Today on
Ink Sweat & Tears some new Christine Busta translations
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Georg Heym's Fever Hospital

In January 1912 the young German poet Georg Heym met his untimely death whilst ice-skating. At the time he was trying to rescue his friend, Ernst Balcke, who had disappeared through the ice of the frozen River Havel near Berlin when he also fell into the water and was drowned. There follows a Poet-in-Residence translation of Georg Heym's poem Das Fieberspital.

FEVER HOSPITAL

The pale screen on which the many beds
blur is a bare wall in the hospital ward.
The patients, thin marionettes, walk
in the aisles. One of their number

has all the illnesses. And with white chalk
his suffering is cleanly noted.
The fever thunders. Their innards
are burning mountains. Their eyes stare

at the ceiling and two enormous spiders
pull long threads from their stomachs.
They sit up in their cold linen sheets
and their sweats with pulled-up knees.

They bite on the nails of their hands.
Their brows glow red lights
in grey and furrowed fields
on which death's early sunrise blooms.

They extend their white arms, tremble
from cold and are dumb with horror.
Black from ear to ear their brains whirl
their fast and monstrous spinning waltzes.

The black space yawns behind their backs
and from the whitewashed walls
there reaches out the arm to clench the throat
and slowly close its hard and bony hand.

______________________
Georg Heym (1887-1912)and
Gwilym Williams (Feb 2009)