Since this week’s Wednesday Quotes is writer’s choice I thought I quote myself for a change. My much younger self. At one stage I was taking a course in calligraphy and I very quickly got bored copying the cloyingly sweet poems and sayings. As you … Continue reading Of Snails and Knights and Mistakes
With apologies to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who wrote a well-known poem which starts: “Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?” (it’s normally translated as lemon trees but he writes lemons). If you are wondering, he was talking about Italy – not realising that … Continue reading Know You the Land Where Lemons Bloom?
Cover your heaven, Zeus,With cloudy vapours,And test your strength, like a boyBeheading thistles,On oaks and mountain peaks;Yet you must leaveMy earth alone,And my hut you did not build,And my hearth,Whose fireYou envy me. I know nothing more paltryBeneath the sun than you, gods!Meagrely you nourishYour … Continue reading Prometheus
It worked. Word!
I was sitting in a training session and was bored. I looked out of the window. This is what I saw:
Three words.. HAVE I StUCK. Or possibly shuck. English words in a German setting. Intriguing.
As hard as I tried I couldn’t see more, not even during the break. After class I did a bit of recon and yes, I found more of the words, the whole wall, a little hut on a flat roof and – a poem. Only page one, though.
……………………………………….
According to polls, the most beloved poem by Germans is Hermann Hesse’s Stufen (Phases).
One of the lines reads:
In every beginning lives a magic, Protecting us and helping us to live.
In the Fog
Strange, to wander in the fog.
Each bush and stone stands alone,
No tree sees the next one,
Each is alone.
Hermann Hesse
These are the first lines of one of the most well known poems in German:
Im Nebel
Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Einsam ist jeder Busch und Stein,
Kein Baum sieht den anderen,
Jeder ist allein.
But since I started this, at least partly, I give you my very own poem limerick:
There once was a lady who liked to blog,
Who was out taking photos, stumbling through fog.
She kept shouting crossly: “Who had this idiotic idea?”
And even more loudly: “What the fog am I doing here?”
“I’d rather be home with my sweetheart and snog.”
Linked to Cosmic Photo Challenge: Misty Memories.
PS: The title of my post is an English/German wordplay. German “Mist” literally means manure in English but it is a widely used expletive when other words seem too strong.
This witty poem about apples and pears and seasonal occupations of young rascals is by Theodor Storm, a well-known German writer. He wrote it about 150 years ago and it was published in a calendar to portray late summer woes (and pleasures).
I couldn’t find a translation so I tried my hand on it. Bear in mind that the German is by choice overly polite and very contrived. If somebody knows of a translation, I’d be very interested to read it:
August (personal ad)
The esteemed lads who are this season
planning to steal my apples and pears
are kindly requested if at all possible
to restrain themselves in these affairs
so as not to trample my carrots and peas
In the adjoining patches, please.
Here is the orignal:
August (Inserat)
Die verehrlichen Jungen, welche heuer
Meine Äpfel und Birnen zu stehlen gedenken,
Ersuche ich höflichst, bei diesem Vergnügen
Wo möglich insoweit sich zu beschränken,
Dass sie daneben auf den Beeten
Mir die Wurzeln und Erbsen nicht zertreten.
Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo prompt: The end of summer.
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.
( excerpt from the poem Der Panther / The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke)
https://bopaula.wordpress.com/2017/06/22/thursdays-special-vision/
pictures imperfect blog 