VOLUME 3 NUMBER 1
Spring 2009
First off, Ezra has to say "my bad," (but in a foreign language, so it isn't as painful): mea culpa. Due to an electronic accident here at school, the files of some submissions to Ezra may have been lost. So if you submitted work between May 8, 2008 and December 20, please send it in again. You'll go to the head of the line.
We want to remind you of our friendly competition. The following are great sites, furthering the cause of literary translation: calquezine.blogspot.com; literarytranslators.blogspot.com; pbtranslations.wordpress.com; brave-new-words.blogspot.com. Ezra has a ¡huzzah! for New Orleans University Press, which will soon bring out translations of the great Spanish poet Antonio Gamoneda, and Nabile Farès’s novel A Passenger from The West (in their Engaged Writers Series).
This issue of Ezra romps from Roman times to the modern Caribbean and the poetry of Négritude. We're especially happy to have a return visit from George Held, and the work of the young Fulbright Scholar, Adrianne LaFrance. The latter translates Senghor, on this the one-year anniversary of his colleague Césaire’s death. Our featured writer, Anny Ballardini, is a force in four worlds: teaching, interpreting, translating, and publishing her own poetry.
Which helps us all to understand what Catherine Porter meant in recent remarks to the MLA. She speaks of being a translator in three realms: in theory, in teaching, and in the world (in practice). Without subjecting her to exegesis, let’s assume we all do what she meant: we explore theory, and what translation can do potentially; we impart some of this to our students; we go out in the world and make various cultures available to each other. Hats off to us!
TRADUTTORI/TRADUTTRICI
ANNY BALLARDINI CRAIG SMITH
ADRIANNE LAFRANCE GEORGE HELD
JENNIFER YOUNGQUIST DEREK UPDEGRAFF
DAVID BOLDUC
FEATURED TRANSLATOR:
ANNY BALLARDINI lives in Bolzano, Italy. A poet, translator and interpreter (simultaneous interpreter for English, French, Italian), she received her MFA in Creative Writing from UNO, University of New Orleans, Chair and Director Bill Lavender. She teaches high school; edits Poets’ Corner - Fieralingue, an online poetry site; and writes a blog: Narcissus Works. Besides various full length publications of translations, Anny has two collections of poems, Opening and Closing Numbers, published by Moria Editions, Editor Bill Allegrezza, 2005; and Ghost Dance in 33 Movements published by Otoliths Press, Editor Mark Young, 2009. For a detailed CV see: http://ballardinianny.blogspot.com/
WORDS
~~translated by Anny Ballardini
Days, months and years
do not count any more:
they are senseless words
left hanging on newspapers
or deaf sounds
you hear articulated
from the void of sound boxes,
radio or television.
There is no more time
out of the world
and without a way of counting
on your acting in space.
And then who knows
how many other things
changed or already
forever ended
there outside…
You are not alive any more,
yet you are surprised
you are not dying.
DREAM
I am not weeping
for myself,
I never asked for help
and I know that, once
you have been infected,
you will never recover
even if you stop
and once recovered
you keep on being sick.
I recognize the mistake
and sharply know
for each gram of pleasure
the tons of pain
of vomit and boredom
it has cost,
for such paradise
even more hell
I’ve crossed.
But it was
my dreaming
of untying freedom
from body’s bondages
that has betrayed
and chained me
from inside to infinity.
TORMENT
The woman I once
loved,
the black-eyed
girl
who has forever
left me.
The idea that I
will never see her…
It is my torment
here:
to die without death,
a time that
meanwhile goes by slowly
and does not exist
and seems not to end,
a not having
by now any doors
from which to get out.
CUT LIFE
It was not curiosity
or boredom
that pushed me
and mislaid me…
it was instead the minute
consciousness
of me in the world
to move and lead
my unknown steps
into my precipitous fall.
The world and I,
exact correspondences:
stone without lip
and lips without verb,
however much I pursue
and look for.
Rather than escaping
I looked for
it,
but nothing did I
suffer or abandon.
I have always chosen,
and attached to it
finally myself…
nor ever given up.
I have chosen and loved,
by making mistakes, yes.
NIGHT
Oh my night different
from all the other
nights in the world,
externally luminous
night
in its fist
fulminating absence,
chant and harmony
sighing inside
your silence,
breath that stretches
and endlessly sates
the whole being
not diminished any more,
submerged abyss
filled by its collapse.
three by PAOLO RUFFILLI --contemporary
BLACK MASK
~~translated by Adrianne LaFrance
She sleeps, reclines upon the ingenuousness of the sand.
Koumba Tam sleeps. One green leaf of palm veils the frenzy of hair,
cambered copper forehead
Closed eyelids, a bowl doubled, wellsprings cemented fast.
That fine crescent, that lip more black and voluminous up to the brink of grief --
where goes the smile of that conniving mistress?
The plates of cheeks, the silhouette of the chin, singing a mute chord.
The face of a mask, closed from the ever-fleeting, without eyes
without matter.
A head of bronze, absolute, and with its patina of time
defiled neither by artifices nor rouges,
nor wrinkles,
nor by the footprints of tears
or kisses.
Oh face, such as God made you even before the memory of all time,
face of the dawn of the world,
do not open yourself as a tenuous neck,
to cause a stir in my flesh.
I love you, oh beauty of my single-chord eye.
LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR
CHESTNUTS FROM EYELASHES
~~translated by Jennifer Youngquist
Chestnuts from eyelashes of the current
You are the place of meetings
Of beautiful unsinkable boulders
Unravel the silk ladder
Of a night that leads toward the tracks of blood
The hourglass of a face that I love
With this arm ends a world
Where the sun of journeys calls toward the other shore
Convicts without concern
Gaze to where the thunder refuses to return
Bottles full of lost time
The landscape of the final lights
Of a throat on pilings
The ancient hair
Sticks to the branches on the bottom of empty seas
Where your body is only a memory
Where the spring does its nails
The propeller of your smile cast afar
Over the houses we have no need of.
ETIENNE LERO (1909-1939)
SEEN IN ROME
~~translated by George Held
There is at the Sistine, in Rome,
A scarlet reliquary,
Covered with Christian emblems,
In which some ancient noses dry:
Noses of Theban ascetics,
Noses of Holy Grail canons,
Where the pallid night congeals,
And sepulchral plainsong sounds.
Every morning someone pours
Some foul schismatic gunk
Into their mystical dryness,
The dust to which they’ve sunk.
ARTHUR RIMBAUD
IN THE MORNING YOU ALWAYS COME BACK
~~translated by Craig Smith
The glint of dawn
breathes through your mouth
at the end of the empty streets.
Gray light your eyes,
sweet drops of dawn
on the dark hills.
Your step and your breath
flood the houses
like the dawn wind.
The city shudders,
the stones give off their scent —
you are life, you are renewal.
Star lost
in the light of dawn,
the creaking breeze,
warmth, breath—
the night is over.
You are the light and the morning.
UNTITLED
You do not know the hills
where blood was shed.
We all fled
we all abandoned
weapon and name. A woman
watched us flee.
Only one of us
Stopped with clenched fist,
saw the empty sky,
bowed his head and died
beside the wall, in silence.
Now he is a bloodied rag
and his name. A woman
waits for us in the hills.
UNTITLED
You are earth and death.
Your season is darkness
and silence. Nothing lives
that is more distant from the dawn
than you.
When you seem to wake
you are merely pain,
it is in your eyes, your blood
yet you don’t feel it. You live as
like a stone lives,
like the hard earth.
And you dress in dreams
gestures sobs
that you ignore. Sorrow
like the water of a lake
trembles and surrounds you.
There are circles on water.
You let them disappear.
You are earth and death.
three by CESARE PAVESE
Alpheius of Mytilene.
--series translated by David Bolduc. Authors precede poems.
Wretched are those whose ruined life is loveless.
For without desire, it’s not easy to do or say anything.
I, for example, now rouse much slower.
But if I see Xenophilus, I’ll fly faster than lightning.
Therefore, I tell all men not to flee,
But to pursue sweet desire.
Love is the soul’s whetstone.
Anonymous.
Though willing friend, I can’t make you.
You neither ask, nor give when I ask,
Nor accept what I give.
Julius Leonidas.
Zeus rejoices again in the Ethiopian banquet.
Or, golden, steals into Danae’s bed–room.
It’s a marvel seeing Periander,
He didn’t carry off from Earth the beautiful youth.
Is the god no longer a boy–lover?
Strato.
How long will we steal kisses and nod secretly
To each other with wary eyes?
How long will we talk without end,
Joining back delay to idle delay?
We’ll spend the beauty delaying.
Before the envious come, Phidon
—Add deeds to words!
Scythinus.
There has come to me a great woe, a great war,
a great fire, Elissus, full of love’s ripe years,
Himself, at that timely sixteen,
And with every charm, great and small,
And who reads with a honey voice,
And lips honey to kiss,
And a thing within perfect for gripping.
What am I to do? He says—just look!
So I often lie awake fighting this empty love by hand.
Meleager.
I’m caught. I who before often laughed
At the serenades of love–sick young men.
Winged Love, Mysicus, nailed me to your gates,
Inscribing, “The Spoils from Chastity.”
Tullius Laureas.
If my Polemo comes back safely unharmed
As he was, Lord of Delos, when parting,
I do not refuse to sacrifice the bird by the altar,
Herald of the Dawn, that I promised you in prayers.
But if he truly comes having either more or less
Than he had, I’ve been freed from my promise.
But, Polemo came with a beard. If he himself prayed for this
As dear to him—exact the sacrifice from the praying.
Stayllius Flaccus.
Parting from Polemo, if he came back safe and sound,
Being well, Apollo, I promised the sacrifice of a bird.
But Polemo came to me hairy–chinned. No, I swear by you,
Phoebus, he doesn’t come to me, but shuns me
With quick cruelty.
I’ll no longer sacrifice the rooster to you.
Don’t cheat me, returning me chaff in place of full ears.
TO RICHARD WILBUR, ON HIS COLLECTED WORKS
(Horace III.30)
Modeled after the Latin of Horace
~~translated by Derek Updegraff
You’ve built a monument that will outlast
The stiffest bronze and which already stands
As one that has undoubtedly surpassed
The pyramids dispersed through regal sands,
A monument that violent rains and winds
Cannot tear down, nor countless passing years
As one age ends and as one more begins.
You will remain a man who perseveres
In life despite the brevity of days
Allotted to us all. As long as lines
Of verse are read, you will receive fresh praise
From every generation’s sharpest minds.
Beyond the halls of Amherst and each hill
And field of North Caldwell, where children climb
The grounds that shaped your early years, you will
Be deemed the leading poet of your time,
Who mastered and maintained the meters slim
To English cadences. Melpomene,
Accept his merits and present to him
The Delphic laurel for his skilled display
TO A MAN OF LETTERS, ON A TRAGIC
OCCASION (Catullus 96)
for Alfred Dorn
~~translated by Derek Updegraff
If any sweet or beneficial thing
Can go where silent graves remain,
Alfred, from our grievous pain,
The longing that enables us to bring
Old loves to life and makes us weep
For friendships we no longer keep,
Surely Anita’s thoughts are not of grief
For her too early death, but of
The joy she feels from your great love.
A WARM WELCOME TO THE CITY (Catullus 43)
~~translated by Derek Updegraff
Hello. Good afternoon, young girl, whose nose
Is hardly small, whose foot is great in length,
Whose eyes are brightly dull, whose fingers, those
Cherry-topped stumps, are poorly masked, whose strength
Is certainly not seen or heard when she
Discusses anything, whose lips are damp
With spittle spots, mistress of that carefree
Yet bankrupt rake from your resort-side camp.
Your town says you are something to behold?
They think your “beauty” matches that of my
Elizabeth? Oh foolish times that mold
Dumb men whose tastes can’t help but stupefy.
OSTENTATIOUS LIQUEURS (Horace I.38)
Modeled after the Latin of Horace
~~translated by Derek Updegraff
I hate ornate and showy drinks, Stephen—
The cocktails mixed with vivid colors cause
Me grief. Don’t search the fridge for fruit, even
For that final bottle of grenadine,
And please put down those stupid straws
Of purple, orange, and green.
I’m worried that your fussy self has no
Desire to drink a simple beer from time
To time. A beer is not unfit—you know—
For such as you, whether or not it’s made
Abroad, nor me, apt to recline
And drink beneath the shade.
