"Poetry comes at things through particulars, by means of images, and it doesn't deal so easily with generalities. Its mode is to cherish without limit. You could say it is idolatrous art. Some poems, the great poems, are true to their specific situations deep down, but they also have a universal quality that lets them live again and again, even in apparently unrelated circumstances." -Galway Kinnell
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
11
You will have no companion But the heap of your words
This is from the medieval English lyric Worldes bliss, as translated by me with a deliberate typo in the tradition of those monks who were sometimes not perfect in their copying. That last word would be "works," but I thought "words" had more to say for our purposes.
In case you want to make your own translation, here are the actual lines:
Ne shaltu haben wit thee no fere Butte thine werkes on an hep.
1 comment:
This is from the medieval English lyric Worldes bliss, as translated by me with a deliberate typo in the tradition of those monks who were sometimes not perfect in their copying. That last word would be "works," but I thought "words" had more to say for our purposes.
In case you want to make your own translation, here are the actual lines:
Ne shaltu haben wit thee no fere
Butte thine werkes on an hep.
Post a Comment