Poems for John Darnielle: Song for Cleomenes
Posted: | Categories: poetry, translation | Tags: dao, Poems for John Darnielle
Today is big amalgamation of influences. First of all, this isn’t an original poem, this is a translation. It’s up to you how you interpret which parts of the work are my own, but this is a translation of one of my favorite “history poems” by Bertold Brecht about the creation of the Dao De Jing. This was a lot of fun and a lot of my interests really flow together in this little work (the Mountain Goats, German poetry of the left, daoism, translation, etc.). The meter feels quite unintuitive to write in in English, but it flows really well when its being read aloud. So I encourage you to do that, or maybe I’ll record my own version. I will also attach the original German poem in the footnotes. For a quick translation, without giving it time to rest and reviewing it properly, I’m quite happy about this. In keeping the strange rhyme scheme intact, I think I sacrifice some of the simple language of Brecht’s original that makes him such a people’s poet, although I don’t think it’s so bad as to be deviating from that goal.
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