I've been translating poems for as long as I've been publishing my own. I like doing it for the same reason I like writing in persona: it lets you get inside another person's head, and he can be so different from you - of a different age and gender, from another time. And yet when you start reading, you realise his fears and hopes are much the same as yours, and it's that sense of kinship that excites me. I translate mainly from German poets of the Thirty Years' War period, but also from other times and languages. The translations below have been published in Prisoners of Transience, Selected Poems, Sing for the Taxman and Stonelight, all from Seren.
A site visitor suggested I include the original texts. Nae sooner said nor did, so where you see an "original" hyperlink you can click to see the original text.
Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664)
Epitaph for his baby niece Mariana
(Grabschrift Marianae Gryphiae, seines Brudern Pauli Töchterlein)
who died aged one day, when her family fled the besieged town of Freystadt
I, born in flight, breathing the smoke of war,
ringed round with fire and steel, my father's care,
my mother's pain, was thrust into the light
as my land sank in angry, burning night.
I saw the world, and soon I looked away,
since all its terrors met me on one day.
Though I died young, if only days are told,
count up my fears, and I was very old.
Original
Francis Jammes 1868-1938
Clara d'Ellébeuse
I love, in the past, Clara d'Ellébeuse
who went to a Young Ladies' Academy
and spent warm evenings under the may-trees
reading the magazines of days gone by.
I love no other, and I feel blue rays
of light fall on my heart from her white breast.
Where is she? Where was then that happiness?
Into her room's bright clearing, branches thrust.
It may be that she isn't yet dead,
or maybe that's what we both were.
There were dead leaves on the great courtyard
in the cold wind which closed that kind of summer.
Remember where the tall vase used to stand,
with peacock's feathers, near the fancy shells?
We'd hear the grown-ups talk of lost vesels;
they'd say, the Sandbank, meaning Newfoundland.
Do come, my dear Clara d'Ellébeuse
and if you do live, let us love again.
Tulips are aging in the old garden:
come with no clothes on, Clara d'Ellébeuse.
Original
Hartmann von Aue 1150-1210, approx
Hartmann was a mediaeval German knight-poet in the service of the young lord of Aue, who was also a personal friend. This lord died suddenly and unabsolved, which meant his soul was in purgatory. The Church at the time promised automatic entry into heaven, without the pains of purgatory, to knights who went on crusade. So Hartmann went, but dedicated the crusade to his dead lord, so that the latter's soul would be the one released. This is the song he wrote before he left. I change all the others on the site for new ones every so often, but not this one, because I've got a soft spot for it. I am a raging romantic at heart.
Kreuzlied
(Crusade Song)
I go with your good grace, my friends and kin.
Good luck my land; good luck my people too.
None need ask why I made this journey mine,
I have affirmed all that I mean to do.
Love took me; set me free on my parole
and now commands me by my love to go.
I can no other: I surely must do so,
if I'm to keep my word and honour whole.
Many men boast what they would do for love.
Where are the deeds? Their words are prodigal,
but I never heard one ask to serve
the cause of love in the way that I shall.
That's love, that drives a man to take the course
of exile, as my words now drive me on,
for if my lord still lived, I'd not have gone
a step for Saladin and all his force.
You poets of love, you often plead in vain,
because your object is a fantasy.
No, when it comes to love-songs, I'm your man,
since I have love and love possesses me.
I love what loves me: where I wish to lie
is where I'm wanted; you were born to lose.
Poor lovers, seeking love that has no use
for you, how can you love such love as I?