16th day … NaPoWriMo.. the invitational prompt is to go to this particular website and select a poem from a foreign language and translate it like you know what they are talking about. FUN… Here’s the website. Poetry International Language List.
I choose a poem from Iceland as it’s one of those place I’d like to go. I have no idea what any of those words mean.. Only that the poem is called ‘North’. I have copied the translation at the bottom after I wrote mine so I don’t have clue what the translation is really.
NORTH
Hægt eins og búrhveli
líðum við gegnum sortann
sem er hvítur
hér á heiðinni
Hann er fastheldinn á sitt
og gefur aðeins eftir
eina stiku í einu
Örskamma stund leiftra þær
í vegarkantinum
eins og eldspýtur
litlu stúlkunnar í ævintýrinu
og lýsa okkur
þar til við komum aftur
upp í vök
að blása
NORTH…My interpretation
The riveting chill
of the blank white
tundra, no shelter
in sight
The sea gives no comfort
in her crack and snap
below the deep freeze
The search for food
makes no find for us
In this brutal North
that will take us
into her flurry
gone forever
NORTH ….proper translation
Slow as sperm whales
we glide through the gloom
which is white
here on the heath
It holds fast to its own
conceding only
one post at a time
For an instant they flash
on the side of the road
like the little girl’s matches
in the fairytale
lighting us
until we return
to the hole in the ice
to breathe
Tagged: be here now, BREATH, DAILY POEM, day 16 napowrimo, GEEZER GIRL, geezer wisdom, iceland, JEANNE ADWANI, JEANNE BEAUCHAMP, LIVING IN THE METAPHOR, north, tundra
