Translations from Memory E-Book

Fred D'Aguiar

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The memories from which Fred D'Aguiar translates these poems are cultural and personal, from the anciencies of the Gilgamesh epic to the modern world, from classical philosophy to C.L.R. James and Aimé Césaire, from Asia and Europe to the new world in which their destinies are unpredictably worked out.A boy posted on a boat at seaThis boy is and is not meAs his vessel dips towardsCurved horizons so curvesRise and back awayfrom 'Trans Coda'D'Aguiar's concluding translations are of Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite, masters and remakers of language and form, from whom (among a multitude of others) he takes his bearings. This unusual integration of tributes and the ironies they provoke give Translations a radical colouring: D'Aguiar is learned; he is also wry, alert to the false notes in history and what follows from them. 'The world map    /    Turned from red to brown to black     /   And blue, drained of empire.' And he is passionate, responding always to the deep feelings of others, from desire to love, elegy to celebration.

Leseprobe

FRED D’AGUIAR

Translations from Memory

For Aniyah

Contents

Title PageDedicationAcknowledgements Museum GilgameshGreek & LatinGreco-RomanHomerDiderot, OneAfter HoraceBefore OvidSappho, Oh SapphoAeschylusAfricaMilesiansHeraclitus Meets Parmenides Meets EmpedoclesProtagorasSocrates Plato AristotleArchimedesHellenists Versus HedonistsCynics & SkepticsEpicureans & StoicismRomanyPlotinusCatholics & JewsSt BenedictGregory The GreatDark AgesIslamHannibalSt Thomas AquinasFranciscansRenaissanceGalileo’s SnowflakeMachiavelliErasmusMoreReformationBurton’s AnatomySlavery IntroTidalFrancis BaconHeads, Hobbes; Tails, DescartesSpinozaLeibnizLiberalsLocke Meet HumeHume Meet LockeRomanticsPushkinRousseauKantHegelEquianoSchopenhauerNietzscheUtilitarianMarxSojourner TruthBergsonMarie CurieDouglassTagoreEinsteinPhenomenologyLevi-StraussFanonBarthesW.E.B. DuBoisMalcolmMLK IntroThe Sirens’ Song by Romare BeardenWilson HarrisDantePushkin ReduxAnna AkhmatovaLighthouseGeorge SeferisLorcaHitchcock’s VertigoAime CesaireCalvinoOur King JamesMartin CarterSargasso SeaMandelaDiderot, TwoWalter RodneyTrans CodaYeats, Eliot, PoundDWKB About the AuthorBy the Same AuthorCopyright

Acknowledgements

Tidal emerged out of a residency at Liverpool University English Department’s Travel, Transculturality and Identity in England (TIDE) project led by Professor Nandini Das, and published in Transitions (USA).

The Sirens’ Song by Romare Bearden appeared in the anthology Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Responding to the Art of Romare Bearden, edited by Kwame Dawes and Matthew Shenoda (Northwestern University, 2017).

Other poems appeared in part or in revised form in the following: Griffith Review (Australia), Faultline (USA), Island (Australia) and Poetry (USA).

Museum Gilgamesh

A teen couple, hand-in-hand, breeze past

The senior uniformed greeter and barely glance

One semi-colon, backlit, carved from elephant

Tusk, an intro to the whole, displayed behind glass.

Instead they head for backrooms, where apostrophe,

Tilde, dieresis, look less prized, and shadows invite

These lovers to steal a kiss or two, out of sight,

Or so they think, unaware as they are of security

Cameras discreetly placed in corners to record

All in those quiet rooms. As they head for the exit

The pair approaches a full stop, the last big exhibit,

Mounted as grandly as any finality accords.

Both pray, Sweet Jesus, let this last, but they know

For all their present magic, they must end now.

Greek & Latin

1

A puzzle of perfumed rubble,

Ethnologists in white gloves brush,

label, date and crate, slaves under

laden tables, who bare teeth, force

smiles, for a motion, a wager, tabled

for all seated around – well, yes – High

Table; they look out one eye, named

progress, passed from hand to mouth

to hand, back and forth, as women

enter, exit, Morse code foot shuffle

headdress disguise, fashion muzzle.

2

There is more to race than a tanning

salon suggests. Take our woman in black,

pink gums, pink cuticles, white instep,

her black is seasonal and in your face.

She walks into and out of her skin

as one would a supermarket

without a second thought for

all the things in her shopping

cart: tanning oil, roll-on anti-perspirant,

(begin sax solo) quail, plus sales tax.

Greco-Roman

Poor language, gives away too much

too soon, asks for too little too late,

or else basks in continual deferral?

Peel my dead skin, layer by rusted layer,

watch how limited time reddens, folds

under scrutiny, yields to touch

as much as talk, and looks,

if looks could kill, rather than this blank

silence among dead, this echo in a shared grave.

Homer

The topless towers on South Beach

Keep their shape with a watering can

That stops them crumbing in the sun.

Under the overpass homeless men,

Women and some children stake out

Ground with cardboard and shopping carts.

Armies of tourists snap the castle and stare,

News crews aim and shoot the ramparts

From various angles and interview

The architect – a shy young man

Bronzed like a Greek god with hair

Involuntarily bleached by sun and sea

Dirty blonde and twisted by neglect

Into dreads, no Jah, no Rastafari,

No mercy, mercy, me, a stone’s throw

From those poor folk with no temples

But the pillars that support the overpass,

Under a starlit roof named after gods.