DAY 23

Today’s prompt (optional, as always), is an oldie-but-a-goodie: the homophonic translation. Find a poem in a language you don’t know, and translate it into English based on the look of the words and their sounds. For example, here are three lines from a poem by the Serbian poet Vasko Popa:

Posle radnog vremena
Radnici su umorni
Jedva cekaju da stignu u barake

I might translate this into English as

Post-grad eggnog, ramen noodles.
Nikki in the morning,
jacket just stuck with brakes.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it does give me some new words and ideas to play with. Happy writing!

DAY 23 – my choice was:

LOVELY WATER LILY BY JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Im Wasser wogt die Lilie, die blanke, hin und her,

Doch irrst du, Freund, sobald du sagst, sie schwanke hin und her:

Es wurzelt ja so fest ihr Fuß im tiefen Meeresgrund,

Ihr Haupt nur wiegt ein lieblicher Gedanke hin und her!

In water wig the lily, the blank thin and hair

Dock irritates you friend, baldly you sag, see swanky thin and hair

Yes wurzle jars feast ear fussy teeth more ground

Ear hope near wheat eye lea lick get down thin and hair

From that I got:

A lily flower, translucent almost blank so thin,

A dock leaf to soothe my sagging bald, but swanky friend

A wurzle turnip in a jar near your ear, a fussy you – teeth on the ground -

Hope brings your ear and eye near the meadow lea, you lick thin hair down.

(which is nearly as bad as the quasi-translation!)

The lily flower with petals so thin

Grows near the hairy nettle and dock

Feast your eyes and teeth on nearby ground

Where wheat and wurzles grow for your meal.

(even that's hardly better!)

DAY 24

And now, our (optional, as always) prompt! Peter Roberts has been participating in NaPoWriMo for several years now at his blog, Masonry Design. He has the charming and odd distinction of having only written poems about masonry. Today, I challenge you to do the same (for one day, at least), and to write a poem that features walls, bricks, stones, arches, or the like. If that sounds a bit hard, remember that one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems was about a wall. Happy writing!

An ancient wall with bricks all pitted

In its centre an arch with gentle curve.

Red bricks with lime cement

Tell silent tales of history past.

Red bricks which whisper tales

of people clothed in strange attire.

Jackets and breeches of strange shape,

Dresses which brushed against the floor.

The dimpled stone which made

a garden edge beyond the wall.

Flowers that grew and brushed the brick

of this elderly wall so frail, so tall.

Bricks made by hand in an old kiln

By knowing hands made strong with skill.

Bricks made to last, now covered in dust

Stand yet still for us to enjoy.