.before i am done with this escapade, i will try to stick travis' - walking down the hill on repeat for a while... to settle for the mantra... something that needs a repetition in the background, before the final collage... and before... what settles as dust from burnt old father oak and my body too... or perhaps... the inter-connectivity that's shared between ethnic minorities: the kashubians, the sorbians, the navajo, the dene suline, the inupiaq, zuni hopa and the dogrib... the Łacinka & Łatynka (belarusian and ukranian) respectively... Łacina: Latin... as it is known on the vicinity of the old capital of Cracow... simply from a shared letter... no more a hello than a plain disregard for twitter poetics... or instagram: captions... sometimes you just want a chicken drum-stick of words... and the bone and the cartilege and the heads filled with marrow... which is more... than some toothpick escapade... well... Winchester is so old for anyone to remember... and London is so nuanced that even Warsaw makes the count... but Cracow sits... humbled... when snow falls... there's the actual snow... and there's the mistaken snow of the ash from auschwitz.
once - when i was much younger - and my voice
was but a crude and feeble whimper -
nothing that could compare itself to a butterfly
in haiku - i would be found trying to forcibly imitate
anything immediately read -
what a naive misadventure upon every turn...
every poem became: as if an act borrowed from
Macbeth - quiet simply - a young man's jealousy...
i can only now gratify myself and the audience that...
i have matured beyond that hot-headedness... former...
now? i rather simply translate the work -
as i am sure that something will be lost -
however good the translation might be...
or the original text...
here's my first attempt...
zbigniew herbert - kaligula (1st attempt
and the last ettempt)
/
while reading old chronicles, poems and biographies
Mr Cogito sometimes experiences feelings
of a physical presence of the people long ago dead
Caligula (is speaking / speaks):
from among all the citizens of Rome
i loved only one
Incitatus - a horse
when he walked into the senate
the unblemished toga of his fur
shone immaculately among that of
the cowardly murderers' sitched with purple
Incitatus was full of advantages
he never spoke
a stoic's nature
i think that at night in the stables he read
philosophers
i loved his so much that one day i decided
to crucify him
but his noble anatomy objected to this
he accepted the dignity of consul indifferently
he held authority the best
in that he didn't hold any authority
attempts to persuade him to have permanent
****** relations with my dear wife Caesonia failed
therefore a line of caesars - centaurs
was never created
which is why Rome fell
i decided to appoint him as a god
yet on the ninth day prior to the days of February
(chaerea) cornelius sabinus and other fools
obstructed the intentions of this godly work...
he accepted the news of my death peacefully
he was thrown out of the palace
and sentenced to exile
he endured this blow with dignity
he died without any hiers
slaughtered by a thick-skinned butcher from the vicinity
of Anzio
Taticus is silent
about the posthumous fate of his meat
/
perhaps looking at the original -
would help... oh more surely...
but prior to the original...
i can see that certain peoples of asia...
who have a culinary superiority complex...
who hide behind a spice grenade...
have an aversion to cabbage...
and it's like that irish love potatoes
and the slavic people love cabbage joke...
don't mind me morphed into a pawn...
the persians abhored and still abhor spicy
food from bengali bush monkey regions
of the raj...
persians have a palette for sour foods...
can you imagine eating a hot-dog...
without choked onions, chillies...
sauerkraut and some sweet gherkins...
mustard and ketchup?
i can't... then again: a cow is more than just
milk... mother goat...
but there comes a time when you can...
appreciate the culinary superiority of the blue indians...
then a minute later call it: a kitchen of black cardamom
stink!
believe me... black cardamom stinks...
but a problem with sauerkraut is a problem
with persian tastes...
sour... sooner rather than later i'll see...
sauerkraut added as the german delight...
in an ottoman kebab wrap...
the sourness could cut through the fatty mustang
of the lamb... somehow...
because the pickled chillies are not enough...
and the raw spanish onions do very little...
the blue indians throw "beef" around
an appreciation of sauerkraut... i just give them
the one-liner: black cardamom and...
the ultimate dye... turmeric...
it will stain, anything... plastic, metal,
ceramics: oddly enough no... and glass...
spice barons, eh?
the original... but it's not exactly the original...
since... i do borrow from"elsewhere":
sound distinction that exfoliate in the meaning...
after all... i did graffiti the original with
some cyrilic...
sz = š = ш = (sh)ape ≠ ś = sie- prefix: if śιe
cz = č = ч = (ch)urn ≠ ć = cie- prefix: if ćιe
ż (= rz) = ž = ж ≠ ź
(also noted in french: via je suis...
oddly enough... it sounds like жe swée...
but looks like: je suis ce et cette)...
ń ≈ ñ
ch = x
nonetheless...
or more importantly...
c = ц ≠ c = s = ç...
an no... there's no translation
of a cedilla A(ą) nor a cedilla E(ę)...
a bit easier when it comes to...
ł = w
but... w = v...
so ł(h)en... the surd hatch...
eyes closed: mouth agape!
no "v" given how the greek upsilon (υ)
was sharpened into (ν):
i always thought: cute acute ó = ω: tool...
while omicron was more grave (ò)...
and up! upsilon! the u was first acute
before it became the ω in the german
umlaut (ü)...
otherwise: there's mOre to what's
later a mOvie... the elongation of:
tool... the distinction: thus pronounced...
wants to be recognißed -
the s to z to s to z interchange within
the ß: es'zett... yes... the apostrophe is "somehow"
necessary...
if the hebrews have their vowels in niqabs...
we can have our...
exfoliation of consonants and vowels...
fully exposed... nonetheless included!
with: details of the frontier!
and in them: i mark my finger in the sand
and skull among the cavern,
the rocks the... ghostly whispers that
shadows should profoundly speak...
but never do...
my shadow my ghost...
my first avenue turned should i be thinking
about a Hiroshima selfie... shadow glued
to the ******* wall... move it: chess-***...
bullet to the head...
and then two weeks... trying to die...
in a prison cell...
with one nightmare overtaking the previous
nightmare... in how...
your brain will never be:
the eyes-connected to the sponge:
mr. chikatilo...
the sponge: sorry... nothing but shrapnel...
perhaps some eyes...
but your eyes are consistently closed...
let's not mind them...
and what's because, what?
finnegans' wake: no diacritical markers...
because, what? low on ink?
if low on ink... can't help you...
but if not enough paper?
¶ (pilcrow) all the paragraphs! sardine words
onto the page!
the god awful truth was that i smoked
marijuana in england...
and... the ******* is free! upon the pretence
that you don't own a brothel...
elsewhere: namely Amsterdam...
while in Amsterdam i had a thought:
what about ******* a siamese twin
in some vacant... Tehran nightmare come true?
gang-bangers are treated better than i...
in terms of "treatment":
the best they ever gave me...
was to be left: to my own devices...
when i should have been learning german...
they sent me to the window-licker class
of c.v. writers anonymous...
because: m'ah hanging-leash of in and leash
was a bad, spotty E... with a tail!
devil's spawn... or something that would
always come from the warsaw pact...
or... coming from one: under the iron curtain...
would show... and cover the current brood...
with a change of element...
from under the iron curtain...
then unto: under the silicon curtain..
i'm sure the people have chosen their chess
pieces prior to this: *******-ramming
of the anger itching from the cranium
of a castrated bull...
mash up... no interludes...
let's keep it staccato... and... fits the purpose of...
how best lodged into form...
because the iota and the j are...
let's face it... forced diacritical cage-masters...
i graffitied the original...
because... it became obsolate to simply
translate and become overtly pedantic
as to why: ****** grammar was not going
to fit anglo-slav grammar...
never mind the anglo-ßaß grammar: "native"...
/ чytając stare kroniki, poematy i жywoty Pan Cogito
doświadчa czasem učucia fizyчnej obeцności
osób dawno zmarłych (tampering with a lox ness)
mówi Kaligula
spośród wszystkich obywateli Rzymu
kochałem tylko jednego
Inцitatusa - konia
kiedy wшedł do senatu
nieskazitelna toga jego sierści
l'śniła niepokalanie wśród obшytyx purpurą
tchórzliwych morderцów
Inцitatus był pełen zalet
nie przemawiał nigdy
natura stoiцka
myśłe ze noцą w stajni čytał filozofów
kochałem go tak bardzo жe pewnego dnia
postanowiłem go ukrzyzować
ale sprzeciwiała się temu jego szla(ch)etna anatomia
obojetnie p(rz)yjął godność konsula
wła(dz)e sprawował najlepiej
to znaczy nie sprawował jej w'cale
nie udało sie nakłonić go to trwałych związków miłosnych
z drogą жoną moją Caesonią
więц nie powstała niestety linia cesa(rz)y - centaurów
dłatego Rzym runął
postanoviwem mianować go bogiem
lecz (dz)iewiątego dnia p(rz)ed kalendami lutowymi
(Ch)erea Korneliusz Sabinus i inni gwupcy p(rz)eшko(dz)ili
tym zboжnym zamiarom
spokojnie przyjął wiadomość o mojej śmierci
wyrzucono go z pałacu i skazano na wygnanie
zniósł ten cios z godnością
umarł bezpotomnie
zaшla(ch)towany przez gruboskórnego rzeźnika
z miejscowości Ancjum жшчčšц
o pośmiertnych losach jego mięsa
milчy Taцyt /
no... no Helmut will help you with: dość! enough!
some casanova Nikita might - with:
szczypta: pinch - via... ш + ч = щ: vague - i know...
ah! the calendar's days of february...
already i see that this poem is "unspectacular" -
everything what was supposed to be lost
in translation is, lost -
the jealousy fizzles out and it's plain
as a shadow at noon on a sunny day
that it was never inteded to be there - to begin
with...
perhaps it's not the direct translation -
but how certain words just: sound more appealing -
and add toward the grandiosity...
i don't see how a poem can be translated
without something being lost...
after all: i want to lose: rather retain something
in / from a poem...
i want language to... freely...
"inter-racialiße" itself:
modus operandi - the lingua franca...
the l'ingelese of the modern chapter...
as the greeks would point out:
if the english tourists will not speak our tongue...
if the english tourists will not speak our tongue...
then we will speak their tongue...
and speak it was belgian speak it...
which is, better, than these nativistic half-breeds
of: 3/4 empire pride riddled...
1/4 rotherham bewildered...
we will not out-breed them...
we will: simply talk over them...
and their accents...
which we will learn and thereby:
insinuate over: via diacritical markers
and exceptional surd status reminders
of the raj: H...
i will claim that poetry is where i "paint"...
**** it. collage...
rude importune and most obscene...
a thesaurus cascade of synonyms!
impromptu one off...
it's not a hosonnah in the highest...
but a sitar in the bellowing detphs of the ebb...
it's a growling escapade...
something that ****** a yeti from
the carpathian mountains...
something that would require otherwise
to give it shackles, chains and a non-existent
lunatic asylum!
why dooes picking up... an alive cat...
make you succumb to an affair less...
bothersome... when you are indeed picking up /
handling a dead cat?
don't know...
a quasi-symbiotic affair between
matter and anti-matter?
borrowed terms.... outside of physics's disneyland
pretty irrelevant...
a corpse of a dead cat is always more
heavy than... the animated corpus of
a cat still outside the schrödinger
brackets: cat[ ];
what's death then? a colon, a semi-colon;
a hyphen or an apostrophe?
notably? an apostrophe without having
to be inclined to be used in a:
possessive article 's "scandal"?
i will escape with this language: i learned,
i acquired... i will leave the natives with
nothing but leather for skin:
that i will mark as an armchair...
i will entertain no more than
a genghis khan would have...
when the tanks started rolling...
and the luftwaffe was extinguished...
because... an invasion of an island...
no tanks, no bullets, no bombs...
diacritical markers... instead...
these letters are still: ROME!
came late to the party... had the vaguest notion
of coming late: but also becoming
the d.j.!
old mother: Cyrylica...
will and always helped...
the "natives"...
understand the reins and you can surely
translate... all the old paintings
with: we rode bulls into battle...
we didn't ride horses...
what does an army that that rides bulls
have as compensation compared
to an army that rides horses into battle?
well... a lance with a sharp point is...
replaced with the horns...
and a vector signature of red tied
to the end of a stick...
the horns replace the lance... the end...
somehow: and as the polytheistic gods
came as surprise material in:
goat-******* and bull-******* and swan-fiddling...
the monotheistic god came as...
the lowest of men...
because:
Δ and... ∇: when nabla met delta:
the son of david was born:
which was called by surname: astar...
david astar...
the phenomenon of...
when the father would become jealous
of the son: solomon...
or... rather... the son would never look up
toward the archetype of father...
because the father has his psalms...
while the son had the harem sonnets
of... sparrow-hoarding ****** of the onomatopoeia...
teach? teach? i am this close to...
correcting what has already been written...
however impossible...
claustrophobia and james joyce esque...
why not ж = rz...
and... ž = ż... half a caron: źrenica:
pupilla...
a back catalogue of a bilingual bank of vocab
is: the reason i "solve" and "crosswords"
on a blank canvas... like so...
and how do you think i learned a little bit
of greek: if... ovερλaππινγ?
remaining examples where: ц wasn't used...
well... the diacritical marker hovering above iota
like a halo: should it be used?
in a ciasto (dough) example...
well... debate: ćιasto... or ciasto?
in the confines of ciasto: the "c" is not a ц...
because of the proximity of the iota
as "suffix"... but not as a "prefix"...
цerkiev... цytat... цытaт: citation...
sigh: tate modern is 20 years old...
but 20 years old will not be...
commemorated with the glass ceiling and:
Olafur Eliasson's 'the weather project' -
which is a great shame -
but who am i to judge?
let it be 'maman' by louise bourgeoise...
the same goes with the acute s...
even... imploring: prosić -
otherwise... imploring: prośιć...
siano vs. śιano: hay
śnieg... snow...
i've been advocating the necessary guillotιne
for the iota... and the ȷazzy shιt ιn between...
and so much of my life could be deemed
simple... but how i can complicate it with a scrutiny
of language...
the best escape plan i can find -
and this is language: outside the realm of
academic rubrics - that it might borrow from
an international phonetic alphabet
of the linguistic dept. it will not...
it will consolidate two languages: dig two trenches...
and then borrow a third language or a fourth
to dig a tunnel or two between the two trenches...
well that's that for sharpening an arrow
and shoving it up cupid's ***...
to make him walk back smothered by knuckles
and recount to his parents:
Eros and Aphrodite... some of us would much
prefer uninterrupted work /
sifting through archaic words...
and leaving: the currency of vogue be:
something that only attracts:
panic is worse than fascism...
panic disorientates large crowds...
which... fascism is... unlikely to do...
so says the universal mantra of cheese grating:
smiles.
