The latest issue of Modern Poetry in Translation takes as its theme the so-called ‘minority’ languages and cultures of our modern, globalised world. It explores a wide variety of viewpoints – translated poems, brief essays, anecdotes, photographs – and a wide range of issues: causes for lament, anger and revolt, but also for celebration, worldwide and perennial.
At the heart of the matter lies the struggle for what John Clare called ‘self-identity’, a chief factor in which is language, one’s own peculiar tongue and the dialect of the tribe.
On a calm day the gaps, the audible
ellipses, become la-la-la-la-la—
the way that most tongues sing along
when we don’t have the words.
I know this in my scant Estonian: that laul,
is song. John, stay in those days,
not the flurries of hard consonants, the ka-,
the ga-. that come with finger-stabbing
and a hunted look. Lully, lulla... I wish you
the Coventry Carol, comfort on the edge
of any language, its lully, lulla, lullay
Philip Gross
At the heart of the matter lies the struggle for what John Clare called ‘self-identity’, a chief factor in which is language, one’s own peculiar tongue and the dialect of the tribe.
On a calm day the gaps, the audible
ellipses, become la-la-la-la-la—
the way that most tongues sing along
when we don’t have the words.
I know this in my scant Estonian: that laul,
is song. John, stay in those days,
not the flurries of hard consonants, the ka-,
the ga-. that come with finger-stabbing
and a hunted look. Lully, lulla... I wish you
the Coventry Carol, comfort on the edge
of any language, its lully, lulla, lullay
Philip Gross