Francesco Sinibaldi left a lovely poem in reply to my own geopoem on Rosetta Stones. I know it’s lovely because it’s in French, and therefore by default is beautiful. I also speak just about enough French to be able to tell when the words sound good together, and these do.
Of course, I only speak enough French to translate one word out of three, so I had to turn to translation programs. Google Translate made a dog’s breakfast of it, but Bing did an adequate job, and I can sort of put in the articles it missed. Thus, the literal translation according to the least worst automated translator:
In the smile.In thesmile [of] aFlower I seeeternity, thesound of thesnow and stillthe harmony thatsingsit[the]morning…
That could very nearly have been written for our mystery flower, inspired by our latest Rivers installment, couldn’t it just? Love it!
Now, translation is an art, which the online translators don’t have. And my French is atrocious. Je parle un peu français, très mal. The only thing worse than my French is my Spanish, and the only thing worse than my Spanish is all the other languages I speak only a few words of. Point being, I’m not confident enough with those words to translate it beautifully. So someone who speaks reasonable French should head on over there and have a go at it. And if the original poet wants to translate, why, that would be most excellent.
This is one of the reasons I blog, people. So many of you surprise me with interesting and beautiful things. Thank you!
Wow, that Bing translation in remarkably good. Here is what I came up with:
In the smile
In the
smile of a
flower I see
eternity, the
sound of
snow, and again
the harmony that
sings
the morning
Or, alternatively and adding further blog references, those last 3 lines could be:
the harmony that
sings
Matins
My version:
In the
smile of a
flower i see
eternity, the
sound of the
snow and again
the harmony that
sings the
morning…
Oh look, it’s the same as heliconia’s! :) (I agree with the Matins reference, but I would go with ‘morning’ because ‘matin’ isn’t capitalized…)
And you should definitely post more of your fiction. Also here. At least the poetry bits.