Gilgamesh - Sha Nagba Imuru
martedì, dicembre 28, 2004
Bonne Année
A chi passerà di qui tra oggi e i primi giorni di Gennaio, quando conto di tornare e riprendere ad aggiornare.
Paris ç'est toujours Paris, n'est pas?
Arrivederci nel 2005, ma soprattutto a rileggerci.
Gilgamesh
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venerdì, dicembre 10, 2004
Many Rivers Anthology
Il post di oggi nasce da una traduzione 'al contrario'.
Un tentativo di trasposizione dall'italiano in inglese di un divertissement iniziato da Herr Effe, con contributi (a mio modesto parere notevoli) di MassimoSDC, Lizaveta e Sphera, cui ho aggiunto poi StefanoPZ e tt. Potete leggere le epigrafi originali in italiano seguendo il link al blog dell'autore sotto ogni serie, o nei commenti del post di Effe, da cui tutto è partito.
Signore e Signori, ecco a voi..
..Many Rivers Anthology
The Illiterate
A poet I was -
not a single verse I ever wrote.
But what stormy rhythms, inside me!
What boiling of ecstatic words!
And the anger for ignoring how to tell them.
The Philosopher
They came from East, from West
to investigate the secret of life
in the mistery of that unfathomable word
written in fire in my most famous book.
I never had the courage to reveal
it was only a mistake by the typographer.
The Clandestine
From border to border
through misunderstandable languages and countries.
I arrived here in town at last,
they accused me of being a thief and having stolen.
While it was this odorless and colorless town
that suddenly stole my breath!
The Guard
Inside the jail, pride of the city,
I entered in my new uniform and my twenties.
Keys tingling at my belt,
I accompanied the prisoners to the exit
when the day of their freedom arrived.
They went out, I stayed there forty years
to waste myself in ever identical steps.
It doesn't matter from what side you look at them:
these bars are a prison for everyone.
The Preacher
Severe was my sermon from the altar,
I thundered uncompromising from my pulpit,
to judge you then in the confessional booth.
But at sunset, among empty naves and extinguished candles,
what a heavy weight to be the only knowing
that in truth there was Nobody
who could condemn all my sins.
The Sexton
Neither my face nor my name you can remember,
I was only a shadow at his service.
He was splendid in his sacred clothes, hieratic in his gestures.
I stayed behind, in the dark, to
keep the floor shiny.
I was comforted by reading every night that
precept about the Last and the First written in the Book.
But it came the day he denied the Book.
Something exploded in me, and I made sure that my hand was strong on his neck.
“Curse on you, you'll
never take light off me again, now!”
But the pity of the citizens one day put this tombstone of mine in his stone's shadow.
The Flatterer
I made an aimed usage of it
just like a skilled sniper
knelt on powerdom roofs.
I was servant and master,
executioner and victim,
but always very lavish in its application.
Then suddenly my tongue stopped.
And I was dumb in front of the dark Supreme Lady
when she turned on me in the day of the last recommendation.
The Mother
I was Mom, wide, omnipresent and Saint.
They never could say anything about my hard
and meticulous work made of home and children.
I would have done everything for them.
Every day a thousand presences and a thousand corners I filled
and with them I balanced my soul - so dark it seemed to me an infinite abyss.
But the moment came when the house was empty,
words and lights quickly flew away,
so I felt like they had never existed.
My presence crumbled, then, since
it remained only a subtle dust
that dissolved like a puff in the air.
The Nurse
How many of them I washed, I cleaned, I fed,
soft and wrinkled like big newborns
with all their future behind their shoulders
and very little or nothing ahead
And I was proud of my arms,
of my throat laughter
and of the nights spent dancing
with my compatriots
“What can keep them
so clung and clutched to life?”
Only from the bottom of my bed I understood:
huddled not to waste breath
with the terror it wasn't enough
while a woman with quick hands
attended me, an old doll making her effort to survive.
The Railwayman
Forty years I spent travelling
Never going out of the county
I had thousands of travel companions
None of them can remember my face.
But even now when I hear the train
Whistling down there in the morning
I can't avoid asking myself
How can it march, when I'm not there.
The
Accountant
You
saw my lamp lite till late evening
You
saw how many springs I spent
loading spreadsheets, making tables,
giving results
How many budgets I saw, how many of them I
balanced
how many hints I gave to everyone
I was watchful,
hard, careful
and despaired
because
when my day came
only one budget, mine,
was
wrong.
The Princess
It's
easy to envy a princess
when the marriage appears to be
fabulous
but he loved another woman and he still loves her
I
was in excess, even in that royal palace
between etiquette, alarms
and protocol
that regulated my life like a puppet
A
little was sufficient to be alive again
A rapid turn from the usual way
oh
oui, Paris ç'est toujours Paris
now I lie
they'll
let me rest in peace forever.
Anche altri, non meno bravi, hanno contribuito, nei commenti di Effe potrete trovare altre epigrafi, e qualcuna è stata inserita anche qui, nello spazio degli Incontri Im-Possibili, e ora anzi esiste un blog apposito, qui.
Gilgamesh
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