That Which Is Poem by Tom Billsborough
That Which Is
THAT WHICH IS
If you are water do not expect to resemble rocks.
If you are rock, do not attempt to flow.
The soft tongue does not imitate the teeth.
Hard teeth do not imitate the tongue.
Between tongue and teeth there is food.
Between night and day, the dawn.
Neither the past nor the future is the now.
Between the rational and intuitive, opens the miracle.
Matter is beauty, the immaterial is truth.
When Eternity gives birth to petals of light in clocks,
Tongues pierced by birds made of air,
Hands that pour honey and cloud-scented songs,
In the subsoil of the mind there shall appear a sink
Through which your thieving memory will drain itself.
This is a fascinating bit of writing and translation Tom! I love the line 'matter is beauty, the immaterial is truth.' Love that! The images and the ideas grow, bicker, and then flow through a sieve. WOW! Thanks so much for translating and sharing this magic. I really liked this. It's going to the favorites. You translated this with another? How does that work?
Basically, i do the translation and pass it over to Rod, whose first language is Spanish, to check for any errors or colloquialisms I'm not familiar with. My Spanish is quite good but not as strong as my French. I have a book by the author and we are aiming to do more. I completed two more translations today but need to let Rod have the Spanish texts too as my book was published last year but his collection ends at 2013. It's not much of a problem as I can type Spanish at about the same speed as English. I'm still a one finger typist! I have the legs but not the talent! Hopefully we'll do quite a lot over the next few months. The author is a well-known film-maker etc. I liked that matter is beauty. Reminds me a bit of Keats.. Beauty is truth, truth beauty. I'm very tactile so I'm in tune with that idea.
Tom I have read this one over and over again and allwed the images to grow in my head, so what I did get from it was don't try to be something that your not, and the now is now, no before or after. I have more in my head its just trying to word it right....enjoyed it much better now that I let it sink in. Annette; -)
Maybe I'll send you some St Jean Perse some day. Can't post it on PH as it is impossible to beat TS Eliot's wonderful translation. You have understood this one very well. You might like Perse.
I have to say that parts of this one had me confused, (a wee bit) yet, still some lovely lines amongst it also. Annette
I think you should just allow the images to flow into your mind. It does take quite a while and it's not always possible to take in everything. My advice is to work from the last image of the sink and follow the trail back to the water and rock of the first lines. It is not easy. Surrealism never is. And can be confusing but if you can take some value from it, that's what really matters.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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5/12/2024 6:49:08 PM # 1.0.0.1119
Tom dear, I liked all your poems I read already.I Would very much like translate some of them into neohellenic, as I have done with poems of other poets here in PH.I'll try to make them sound equally great.You can yourself propose me some too, if you do not want to leave me looking up to find the better ones. I'll be in touch...