[Tim Murphy]

We've had a string of father/daughter poems, beginning with Schnackenberg's, Doyle's and Stallings' fishing poems on an adjacent thread. Now we have Po's and Mandolin's fine poems over on the Ball and Chain (Seasoned) board, along with Weldon Kees' extraordianry poem posted there. Alan asked me to post this great Wilbur translation about a living and a stillborn daughter.

Song

Never take her away,
The daughter whom you gave me,
The gentle, moist, untroubled
Small daughter whom you gave me;
O let her heavenly babbling
Beset me and enslave me.
Don't take her; let her stay,
Beset my heart, and win me,
That I may put away
The firstborn child within me,
That cold, petrific, dry
Daughter whom death once gave,
Whose life is a long cry
For milk she may not have,
And who, in the night-time, calls me
In the saddest voice that can be
Father, Father, and tells me
Of the love she feels for me.
Don't let her go away,
Her whom you gave--my daughter--
Lest I should come to favor
That wilder one, that other
Who does not leave me ever.

[mandolin]

Tim, I heard this sung, in Alva Henderson's setting, at the West Chester birthday celebration for Wilbur, and it has haunted me ever since. There's nothing else by de Moraes in Wilbur's Collected or in Mayflies, and I can find virtually nothing ("Insensatez"de Antonio Carlos Jobim et Vincent de Moraes interprete par Antonio Carlos Jobim) on the Web. Is there anything else, anywhere?

[Caleb Murdock]

Tim, I've always loved this poem, but I never knew it was about a stillborn daughter. Now that I know, I finally understand it. Thanks!

I should say, however, that it strikes me as untypical of Wilbur, who is normally less emotional than this.

(Incidentally, this was one of the poems I requested for my site, but his publisher wanted about $1,250 for 12 poems for a 7-year period, and I couldn't afford it.)

[Tim Murphy]

Mando, I don't know much about de Moraes, except that he was Brazilian, and I think I once heard that he wrote popular song, sambas, tangos, etc. Caleb, many of Dick's translations sound nothing like Wilbur, and for many years he often incorporated this into his readings precisely because of its emotional punch.

[mandolin]

found another of de Moraes poems -- a sonnet translated by Elizabeth Bishop:

Sonnet of Intimacy

Farm afternoons, there's too mch blue air.
I go out sometimes, follow the pasture track,
Chewing a blade of sticky grass, chest bare,
In threadbare pyjamas of three summers back.

To the little rivulets in the river-bed
For a drink of water, cold and musical,
And if I spot in the bunch a glow of red,
A raspberry, spit its blood at the corral.

The smell of cow manure is delicious.
The cattle look at me unenviously
And when there comes a sudden stream and hiss

Accompanied by a look not unmalicious,
All of us, animals, unemotionally
Partake together of a pleasant piss.

I wonder about that "not unmalicious"

[Caleb Murdock]

What a delightful poem. I usually eschew translations, but when the translator is good, the poem becomes a work of merit in its own right.



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 29, 2001).]

[Tim Murphy]

Paul Lake has writen a gorgeous poem of his own, a poem which owes a debt to this great Brazilian classic. One of those rare poems by the Sphere staff which belongs on this board:

First Fruit


First knowledge is the bitterest fruit.
Before it's made more palatable by years,
it sticks in the throat, intractable to reason
and won’t be moved by any calculus
of motive or advantage. It’s not my son
with seven-year-old wisdom
discussing death around the kitchen table,
naming who will die
in chronological order down to him
with an actuary’s unruffled precision,
but my daughter’s first unseasoned cry,
“But is my Daddy going to die?”
and how she filled the house with sobs and wouldn’t hear
further rhyme or reason
as she choked on salt immitigible tears.

[Tim Murphy]

When I was twenty-one I drank from the Kastallian Spring at the foot of the Phaedriades--at Delphi. Every time I lift a glass to my thirsty lips I drink from that spring. Our own Paul Lake just emailed me this, another poem that drinks from the spring of Vinicius de Moraes:

Lullaby

Hush, child, invisible
As thought or silent prayer
Around a supper table,
Restless and fugitive,
Dear ghost, if you are able,
Consider the young pair
Whose adolescent love
Had not grown full enough
To grant you a small share,
And, for love’s sake, forgive
Those suffered now to live
In love beneath one roof,
By absence made your heirs.

In the not too distant future, Paul will be joining us as Guest Lariat, and I hope you will avail yourselves of this opportunity to query our gifted poet, novelist, aspiring verse dramatist, and teacher, about what makes him tick.--Timothy