We board on the lazy sea crawler,
us cowards, in tea and cream and glory.
Martha, hands in her hair, in her sweet age;
We lurch, cold, remaining in sweeter earth,
And I into Sam's cloud of august.
We are hearts only bent on fame,
While the ashes of our cousins —
A new lineage in lieu of dirt —
Begs us in their choral aching for a keening.
Nov 5, 2019
Nov 5, 2019 at 2:59 PM UTC
We board on the lazy sea crawler,
us cowards, in tea and cream and glory.
Martha, hands in her hair, in her sweet age;
We lurch, cold, remaining in sweeter earth,
And I into Sam's cloud of august.
We are hearts only bent on fame,
While the ashes of our cousins —
A new lineage in lieu of dirt —
Begs us in their choral aching for a keening.
Title means "Wonderland."
I chose a paragraph at random from an Irish translation of Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I then "translated" the paragraph into a poem based solely on the sound of the words, word by word, rather than their meaning. This was the original paragraph:
"Bhí bord arna leagan faoi chrann os comhair an tí agus bhí an Giorria Márta agus an Haitéir ina suí aige: bhí Luch Chodlamáin ina suí eatarthu agus í ina sámhchodladh, agus bhí an bheirt eile ag baint feidhm aisti mar chúisín, a n-uilleanacha ina luí uirthi, agus iad ag comhrá le chéile os a cionn." (tr. Nicholas Williams)