A Blogger’s (Silent) Poetry Reading

Posted by on Sunday, February 1st, 2009

This is perhaps my favorite blogosphere tradition, because it celebrates poetry and Imbolc, a holiday I cherish.  It is also my Mom’s birthday, which makes for a nice little trinity.

I’m a poet as well as a knitter: particularly a poet who translates out of crazy moon languages into English.  I’m obsessed with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and have gushed about her here, and on Eating Poetry while we were still at table (sigh).  So here’s some more Nuala, translated by the wonderful Paul Muldoon this time around.

I Fall in Love

I fall in love, in the fall of every year,
with the smattering of rain on my windshield
and the pale and wan light toppling over the sheer
edge of my field
of vision, with leaves strewn in my way,
with the bracket-fungus screwed to a rotten log:
I fall in love with bog and cold clay
and what they hold in store for me and you, my dear.

I fall in love with all that’s going off:
with blackened spuds rotting in their beds, with
Brussels sprouts nipped in the bud
by a blast of frost, rat-eaten artichokes, and,
like so many unpicked locks,
the tares and cockles buried in shifting sand;
it’s as if I fall in love a little with death itself.

For it’s neither the fall nor the coming to in spring —
neither shrug of the shoulders nor sudden foray
down that boring ‘little road of the King’ —
but something else that makes me wary:
how I throw off the snowy sheet and icy quilt
made of feathers from some flock
of Otherworldly birds, how readily I am beguiled
by a sunny smile, how he offers me a wing.

Filed in Books,Celtic,wool poems | 8 responses so far

8 Responses to “A Blogger’s (Silent) Poetry Reading”

  1. Jane Cochranon 01 Feb 2009 at 9:13 pm 1

    Beautiful.

  2. Janeon 01 Feb 2009 at 9:15 pm 2

    It was me posting that comment, not the bookstore…

  3. --Debon 01 Feb 2009 at 10:33 pm 3

    Just lovely…

  4. --Debon 01 Feb 2009 at 10:52 pm 4

    Oh, and also? Thanks for the reminder! I’ll have mine up tomorrow…

  5. Marfaon 02 Feb 2009 at 7:20 pm 5

    Sweets,

    I just knew you’d have a wonderful poem here for us today – and you do. thanks.

    XOXO

  6. Erinaon 03 Feb 2009 at 8:24 am 6

    My thesis advisor in Amsterdam, Joep Leersson, is her brother-in-law or cousin-in-law or something… anyway his wife and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill are very close. He’s a character… His English is spoken with a very, very heavy Irish accent and when I first heard him speak his native Dutch I was shocked that he was so fluent because I was expecting an Irish accent!

  7. Jenniferon 03 Feb 2009 at 9:40 am 7

    lovely poem ~ thanks for posting it 😀

  8. junoon 05 Feb 2009 at 8:22 pm 8

    That is a kick ass poem. I should dignify it with more adult language, but kick ass is what comes to mind. And no, certainly you do not have to give up either knee socks OR the Ramones, unless you want to. I am going to go download some Violent Femmes in solidarity with this idea, in fact.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Leave a Reply