Saturday, June 13

Rám német nem lel, elmentem én már.

Apám sírt, anyám jajgatott,
S hipp-hopp, e zord földön vagyok,
Põre kisded, vinnyogó,
Mint egy ködbe bujt manó.

Apám karján csápolok,
A pólyáimmal harcolok,
De hiába fáradok,
Hát anyám mellén duzzogok.

Apám, apám, hová sietsz úgy,
Ne nyújtsd meg léptedet,
Szólj, szólj, apám, kér kisfiad,
Mert másképp elveszek.

Sötét az éj, az apja sehol,
Csupa harmat a kisgyerek,
Mély a bozót, s õ egyre zokog,
S a ködkép ellebeg.

5 comments:

Mandula said...

Palindrom title. :)

Metamatician said...

Hey! I was hoping you'd catch that! =)

The poem is a translation from William Blake, btw. "A boy lost."

I changed the title, found a version in Magyar, and hoped you'd find it amusing (not the poem, which is a bit sad, but the whole thing).

It's a pretty poem in English, dunno how it sounds when translated...

Hee hee.

"Able was I, ere I saw Elba."
-Napoleon

:)

Mandula said...

Two poems, actually, the first is Infant Sorrow, the second is The Little Boy Lost. Both have these fantastic translations by Szabó Magda (Magda Szabó is a famous hungarian poetrist and writer, died just a 2 yrz ago! Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magda_Szab%C3%B3) and Tellér Gyula (Gyula Tellér is famous translator too).

Thank you for this. :) :hugz:

Btw, do you know the meaning of this palindrom title? :)

Metamatician said...

Yeah, I know it's actually two poems. I didn't think you'd know any William Blake poems, so I didn't go into details.

I just thought it was cool I found them translated in Hungarian and they still rhyme. That must be hard to do! Although since everything in Hungarian ends in "-ok" - not too hard ;-)

And yes, the title is something like, "Don't worry, I'll be gone before the Germans arrive."

I knew you liked palindromes. :)

Thanks for the link to Magda Szabó, I will check her stuff out. I always like discovering new poets who are intelligent and eloquent.

Mandula said...

I cannot say I know William Blake's poetry, but I found these poems while I was looking after the translators. :) I like those poems anyway. ;)

Translating poems is an art, I think, and you are right, it is very hard, to keep the rhymes, the syllables, sometimes the melody of the text itself...

I have some stuff from Poe, i like him very much, and his most famous poem, The Raven, is translated to hungarian by more than a dozen writer/poet/translator! I send you them in e-mail, you can compare them and see, how different can they be. My favourit is the one by Árpád Tóth. :)

And if I had to translate that palindrom title, I would say "Germans won't find me, I've already left".

:*

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