Patrick O’Brian - The Uncertain Land and Other Poems

The Owl thought, ‘Aha, now may I eat grass,

But this is the time when I make the first pass.’

And through his foul mind there passed devious shapes

Of libidinous bitches and lecherous apes.

[Jetzt kommt er bei Patz, fn3

Und flüßtert ganz leise

‘Heraus liegt ein Auto,

Kommst Du für ein Reise?’

‘Ach nein! Du alt Teufel!

Wie kannst du mir’s fragen?

Ich weiß schon gehörts

L.C.C. dieser Wagon!’

Alors les autres

Se mettaient à rire

En se moquant de l’hibou

Qui ne savait quoi dire.

Il saisit d’un coup

Une bouteille de vin,

La vidait toute suite

Et la jettait du main.

‘Je paris’, dit-il,

‘Je ne quitterai pas

Avant que la chienne

Se sert dans mes bras’.]

The sea and the sky are silent:

they wait.

The sea and the sky are silent:

the girl is late.

The sea and the sky are silent:

the girl is late.

The sea and the sky are waiting:

let her come to her fate.

Couplets in favour of Mrs W. Koren, who sent (per JBC) fn1jam to the O’Brians [at Collioure] in time of dearth

All Attic virtues, beauty, wisdom, wit,

Take which you will, she doth excel in it

All these and yet one more th’Atlantic dame

Hath to illumine her noble spouse’s name,

Mark there the Greek with Chian wine and oil

Comes bearing gifts, and see how vain his toil.

Yet here Transpontine Ceres freely sends

Imprison’d comfits, Polemarchus’ blends, …

And dreams not fear nor anger (see above)

But grateful intercessions and our love

The pallid bread glows purple, and the dew

Of anxious gleed bespreads each wizen’d brow

Encrimson’d mouths gape sated at the last

Such admirable tins of jam as these

Are apt to promote international pese

May Heaven reward Mrs Koren

Who is undoubtedly a pearl among women.

The recipient of jam were [ sic ] undoubtedly a moron

The harsh dry polished rattle of the palm fronds

stirring in the breeze. I had supposed

But not our London sparrow, magpie, crow

Still less the stars by night, our Plough, old Bear

the same Orion, Rigal, Altair there

and through the trees the shining Procyon.

You will come to it

Do not suppose their motions pantomime

because the thing they dig is dark, unseen

the mattock and the shovel swing in time

a near approach will show you what they mean.

Cold from the silent leaden sky, unmoving, full of snow.

Cold, and the sounds far on the smoky air –

the rackle, hoe in stones, the stoney vineyard high

and the working man much farther than the sound

All through the terraced valley, sounds.

The vines are bare, the spare leaves redden:

they prune: and everywhere they grub with shining tools

And in the silence sounds – on silence beads, the sounds.

Now there are women.

gabbling

Where are the women? There

gabbling

above the road, the vines, the olives

the prim the graceful olive trees

the women picking there the olives

a tilted plane, the trees, the women

and then the sky, one-coloured, leaden.

Neat, clear, unworldly, Pieter Brueghel.

I do not like to see the women.

Black. Not shining. Black entirely.

head to foot, and cheesey faces.

Eager, hard and clacking voices: and the hands

are deadly white for ever groping,

They stand as high, and monstrously

they stand as high, as does the tree.

Their hands

are deadly white, for ever groping.

Emasculating

in the trees.

The winter hillside

brown

sharp, clear, distinct

and figures running

tiny, shortened, struggling with space.

A plouff of smoke

is drifting on the field

larger: larger, vague: and now the bang

the echoes clapping in the hills, hard hills,

and now the rain

reversed: the rattle

cruel ripping tearing hail

of stones that fell

in time disturbed, before.

I am poor about loving, so

tibi donum offero

It is a present as you see

extractum ex operi

quod ex libro domini

extractum est, alas by me

theft it was, but theft or no

tibi donum offero .

A present is chiefly a fragment, a token

of affection and love.

And then there is the strong pleasure of giving

a visible proof of unbroken

kindness and more

But, the interchanging pleasure apart

and discounted

A ring is a token of marriage; a book

of the spirit that made it.

and a present of love.

But the marriage is more than the ring

and the mind than the book.

Les vignes, les chênes-lièges, oliviers et thym

les Catalans

le sein

vierge du Canigou

le vent vif des montagnes

et tous

ces pics fiers, hautains

d’Espagne.

J’avais prévu.

Mais pas le moineau anglais, ni la pie

le corbeau parlant gallois, même ici.

Et renard, je t’ai déjà vu

t’ai chassé, là, dans mon pays.

Et à travers les feuilles semées

(étranges feuilles des palmiers)

vieilles étoilles, là notr’ Charrue

Rigel, Altair: à perte de vue

nos douces Pleïades, les mêmes que celles

qui hantent les gens de Camberwell.

vent qui chant dans le bois des oiseaux

et vert le soleil dans les feuilles, jeunes feuilles.

Courbé, courbé sur les pierres

les pierres vertes de Coed Tŷ

yeux fixes, aveugles sur la terre

la terre moussue de Coed Tŷ

je tenais dans mes mains la peine

la peine, la peine, cher Dieu la peine

la peine atroce là, dans mon coeur.

Une femme qui chante

et dans la rue étroite soleil qui fait

des ombres durs, rigides et rectilignes

rien ne bouge

mais dans la rue

le Chant qui tombe, se meurt, gitane

à fendre le coeur, mi corazón.

Oh querido, mi corazón.

Ils chantent ici, les Espagnols

dans le pays d’autres, pays étranger,

dans un autre pays qui n’est pas le leur.

A dog bit his master

who in order to leave to posterity an account of this disaster

took an unusually large piece of pink-and-yellow mottled alabaster

which, having been found at the mouth of a Pyrenean river

did not, by that unforeseen circumstance, cost him anything at all: not so much as a stiver.

A man long used to affection (a roof, as it were;

a condition of being)

Withers strangely when it is removed.

His days grow incommensurably long

He abbreviates his nights with pills Guaranteed

Nepenthe four new pence

Shrivels, old and surly, says Do not say

I stabbed myself with my own lance.

Do not say ‘You in the person of an aging goat

put the fire to your own thatch’

I do not feel the want of shelter any less