I have begun to add readings of poems to my YouTube channel (sidewaysstation). For the time being there are five, but I’ll be adding more over time.
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Giorgio Caproni – Siren Song (Sirena) – translation
Siren song
My city with its uphill loves,
my Genoa all full of sea and steps
and, rising from the harbour, whirlpools of living
life all the way up to reach the ridges
of the sheet-metal roofs, now with what
forcefulness inside me, here where each word
has turned to lead, does it quiver once again
with iodine and salt upon my fingertips
which ache on my type-writer’s keys? Oh, the coal
at sky-blue Di Negro! Oh the foghorns,
at night just when one’s eyes have closed,
and in one’s heart the pain of the future
is opened by a roller shutter
crashingly shaken by a closing door.
Listen to the poem here:
Sirena
La mia città dagli amori in salita,
Genova mia di mare tutta scale
e, su dal porto, risucchi di vita
viva fino a raggiungere il crinale
di lamiera dei tetti, ora con quale
spinta nel petto, qui dove è finita
in piombo ogni parola, iodio e sale
rivibra sulla punta delle dita
che sui tasti mi dolgono? …Oh il carbone
a Di Negro celeste! oh la sirena
marittima, la notte quando appena
l’occhio s’è chiuso, e nel cuore la pena
del futuro s’è aperta col bandone
scosso di soprassalto da un portone.
Commentary: Giorgio Caproni grew up in Genoa. He spent the second part of his life in Rome and many of his poems are about his love for Genoa.
The title is “Sirena”. Caproni uses the word in line 10 to mean the foghorns he heard in the harbour. But “sirena” also means one of the sirens of antiquity who called out to sailors. I believe the title refers to the ceaseless call of Genoa which he always felt. I have therefore decided to use “Siren song”.
Caproni begins: “my city with its uphill loves”. He explained that when he was young the only place you could be alone with a girl was one of the narrow alleys which climb steeply from the seafront. Thus loves were always uphill (for the girls, presumably, they were downhill).
The second line is “Genova mia di mare tutta scale”. You could read this simply as “My Genoa, on the sea, all steps”. But Caproni uses no punctuation and you could read “di mare tutta” as meaning “all sea”. So all sea and also all steps if one reads the words as compressed together. This, actually, is a feeling one has in Genoa, where the steep climbs mean that you even at a distance you feel and see the sea as right behind you.
Di Negro is a wharf in the harbour where coal was unloaded.
I interpret the last lines as the poet thinking of the cradle-like sound of foghorns (at least in my experience, having lived near a harbour myself) and being brought back to reality by the noise of a metal shutter. The Italian “scosso di soprassalto” (suddenly shaken) mimics the sound, and I felt that “crashingly shaken” could reproduce this effect at little cost since “suddenly” is understood anyway.
Is it a duck? Is it a monkey? Is it a dog? No it’s @
Recently, I chanced upon a page in Wikipedia entitled “At sign”. It contains a long list of the names which @ has in various languages. It is quite amazing that one sign can have been interpreted in so many different ways. Here is a selection (some of the names listed are not reported as the most common ones):
In Finnish it is a cat’s tail, kissanhäntä, or a miaow-miaow, miukumauku.
Russians prefer calling it a dog, собака (sobaka).
In Kyrgyz it’s a doggy, собачка (sobachka).
In Armenian a puppy, shnik.
One of various names for it in Ukrainian is little dog, песик (pesyk).
And in Kazakh it is sometimes a dog’s head, ит басы.
In Greek it is a duckling, παπάκι (papaki),
Another name for it in Ukrainian it is an ear, вухо (vukho).
In Kazakh the official name (dog’s head is unofficial) is the beautiful айқұлақ moon’s ear.
In Denmark, Sweden and sometimes in Norway it is snabel-A (elephant trunk A). In Faroese the same but written snápil-a.
Read more…
Stovepipe with a quick legover – Bill Bryson on cricket
In his book on Australia, Down Under, (entitled In a Sunburned Country in the USA and Canada), there is a moment when Bill Bryson is trying to find something to listen to on the radio while driving towards, if I recall properly, Adelaide. Nothing seems to be on the air. But, eventually, he comes across coverage of a cricket match. This gives him an opportunity to unleash a hilarious parody of cricket terminology and commentary styles. If you don’t know anything about cricket and can’t tell a square leg from a silly point or a third slip, have a look at the map of real fielding positions above, which may help you to understand what he is making fun of.
Eventually the radio dial presented only an uninterrupted cat’s hiss of static but for one clear spot near the end of the dial. At first I thought that’s all it was — just an empty clear spot — but then I realized I could hear the faint shiftings and stirrings of seated people, and after quite a pause, a voice, calm and reflective, said:
“Pilchard begins his long run in from short stump. He bowls and . . . oh, he’s out! Yes, he’s got him. Longwilley is caught legbefore in middle slops by Grattan. Well, now what do you make of that, Neville?”
“That’s definitely one for the books, Bruce. I don’t think I’ve seen offside medium-slow fast-pace bowling to match it since Badel-Powell took Rangachangabanga for a maiden ovary at Bangalore in 1948.”
I had stumbled into the surreal and rewarding world of cricket on the radio.
Halfpenny thoughts no.2 – What does the Queen sing in the shower?
Thoughts which aren’t even worth a penny
If you have watched any royal ceremonies involving the Queen of England, you may have noticed that she is the only person who doesn’t join in when “God Save the Queen” is sung. She can’t, of course. It would make no sense.
But I am sure that there have been times when she has sung it in private. How could one resist it? When she’s really worked up about something or, almost unthinkingly, in the shower. She would still need to change the words, though. This is what I think she sings:
“God save my gracious Me, Long live my noble Me, Go-od save Me!”
And, perhaps, people would enjoy it more if they too could sing those words instead of the standard version. In this selfie-littered age of self-display and ceaseless selling, this should, really, become everybody’s personal anthem.
Arise! An imaginary film scene
Recently, I came across an article published in 1945 in the New Yorker entitled “Return to Place Pigalle”, where Joseph Wechsberg, originally from Czechoslovakia, describes returning to Paris as a US soldier and meeting the musicians he used to play with there in the 1920’s.
The musicians describe the experience of playing in Nazi-occupied Paris and leds to a discussion of a violinist-cellist called Maurice, who is remembered for the following:
After 2 A.M., by which hour many of the German customers, not having been brought up on Pommery and Veuve Clicquot, were under the tables, Maurice’s favorite sport was to get up and announce in German that the orchestra would play “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles.” (Maurice had been born in Alsace and spoke German fluently.) The plastered Germans would crawl out from under the tables, make an effort to stand at attention and fall flat on their faces. The French customers would start laughing, and in the end an S.S. man who wasn’t quite drunk would call in the nearest patrol and have the drunken Germans arrested.
I think that this would make a marvellous sequence in a film. In fact, it would be even better if the gag was repeated two or three times in a row. Of course, there is no need for the soldiers to be Germans. I think that Russians would be a good alternative, simply on musical grounds, since the Russian anthem has a swaying quality to it which would well accompany the efforts of drunk soldiers to stand up straight. Even better perhaps, Chinese soldiers, once you know that the Chinese national anthem begins with the call qǐ lái (起来) – Arise! or Stand Up!
Blue Lemons
Blue lemons,
Prickly guitars,
A cat in charge of all the icicles.
“I’ve shot hares.” Patrick Leigh Fermor
After a moment, I heard Baron Pips laugh quietly and asked why. He said : ” You sound just like Count Sternberg.” He was ancient and rather simple-minded Austrian nobleman, he explained. When he was on his death-bed his confessor said the time had come to make a general confession. The Count, after racking his brains for a while, said he couldn’t remember anything to confess. “Come, come, Count!” the priest said, “you must have committed some sins in your life. Do think again.” After a long and bewildered silence, the Count said, rather reluctantly, “Habe Hasen geschossen”—”I’ve shot hares”—and expired.
from A Time of Gifts – Patrick Leigh-Fermor
Disparitions Mystérieuses des Civilisations Méso-Américaines
(Listen to the poem here)
Après le repas à Oaxtepec
le patron du restaurant
nous dit d’un air de satisfaction agaçant
que toute sa viande
vient du Texas.
Je trouve que ce n’est pas normal
de manger tellement hormonal.
Au Mexique on trouve
partout des traces
olmèques, toltèques,
aztèques, mixtèques,
mais qu’en est-il
des Bixtèques?
Phillip Hill 2008
(After the meal in Oaxtepec/the owner of the restaurant/tells us with an/ irritating manner/that all his meat/is from Texas./I find that all this hormonality/is somewhat an abnormality./In Mexico everywhere/one finds traces of/Olmecs, Toltecs,/Aztecs, Mixtecs,/but whatever happened to/your Beefxstecs?)
(This poem is included in my book The Observation Car which is available from
- Amazon.com (paperback)
- Amazon.co.uk (paperback)
- Barnes&Noble (e-book)
- Lulu (paperback or e-book)
What’s Inside
SELECTED POSTS
Angelic Landings – I don’t think anyone else has organised a gymnastics competition for angels. See some of the top contenders in action. Don’t forget to enlarge the pictures so as to be able to give your own scores.
Baristi d’Italia – My hymn to the skills of all the people who make espresso in Italian coffee bars.
The Heart of Chinese Poetry – About the way Chinese poems work. About the best introduction to Chinese poetry.
If vegetables be the food of music – Clips of people playing music on vegetables.
Istanbul – Above the Ring – A poem about travelling on Istanbul’s ferries.
Leopardi’s Infinity – A translation of one of the greatest poems ever written.
A Minor Key – A poem about the wonderful things you can see if you remember to look.
The Most Beautiful Thing – I once spent a period asking everyone I knew what the most beautiful thing they had ever seen was. Here are the results.
My Accidental Greek Wedding – The mysteries and dangers of phrase books.
Reciprocating Soup – The Tantalising Cusine of Google Translate – To accompany your Pumpkin Avalanche would you rather have Baked New Button, Nervous Leaf Rolls or Pan Arab?
Two glimpses of Icarus – William Carlos Williams’ and Auden’s takes on a painting by Brueghel.
Undiscovered Amazon Tribes – If you pick a strange book on Amazon, it’s very likely that you will find that “People who bought this book also bought…” will come up with some surprising suggestions.
Vinylia – The Artificial Language of Dervish – A chapter from my novel “Vinylia” on an artificial language which has verb forms such as the Absolute Abject, the Counterfactual Extortionary, the Vacillatory Optative, the Expletive Introspective, the Bovine Ruminative, the Alcoholic Indeterminate and the Hemorrhoidal Inflammatory.
Sideways Station 