In April 2006 Scottish PEN and Artists in Exile Glasgow, following on from Create:Understand, a Scottish PEN initiative in 2004, were again involved in translating. The results, translations from several different languages, including Pharsee, Arabic and Albanian, can be seen below. The translated poems were also reproduced as poemcards, with illustrations by Artists in Exile Glasgow, and a booklet, entitled 'Between'.
The full set of poemcards can be purchased for £2.50: please contact Fiona McDougall, Arts Officer, Artists in Exile Glasgow Glasgow, City Council Culture and Leisure Service Arts Development Section, 20 Trongate G1 5ES, 0141 287 8902.
S.V.P JE SUIS UN ARTISTE
Le temps n’est plus tel comme jadis
Vérité dort, faveur tient droit
Justice est morte et ne s’en parle plus
Lèvres closes sur quel rire d’une nuit sans fin
Paupières baissées,
Sommeil sacre l’allusion, la craintive de l’exile.
Je me situe dans cet entre deux cultures,
L’exile chance pour l’humanisation des cultures?
Que vaudrais Picasso sans l’art nègre?
Van Gogh ou Monet sans les estampes Japonaises?
Je suis un être en suspens, un être en attente,
L’attente est. attentions
S.V.P je suis un artiste
Londi L. Beketch
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Please, I am an artist
Nothing is the way it was before;
Truth slept, power held sway
Justice was dead and had no voice
When lips were sealed and laughter silenced, the nights were endless.
Cast down your eyes
Into sleep consecrated with the fear of exile
Now I am between two cultures
An exile aiding the cultural diaspora
Where would Picasso be without African Art
Van Gogh or Monet without Japanese prints?
But I am in limbo, I am still waiting,
Waiting, with all eyes upon me
Please, I am an artist
Londi L. Beketch translated by the author and Beatrice Colin
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LEAVING BERLIN
The morning she left Berlin, the sun was shining. It promised to be the
most glorious day in 1927. Wet shirts hung out in courtyards would be dry before lunch-time. Cats lay sprawled in the shade, windows which had been closed for months were finally yanked open to let the putrid air of countless nights of restless sleep escape.
The grass in the Tiergarten was awash with black serge as bank clerks and businessmen stretched out their lunch break. Groups of students sunbathed on the beaches of the lakes in the nude. Even the city's landladies; the
widows, the ones who'd lost their sons in the Great War and their daughters in the flu epidemic, came out on to their balconies with their faces, painted garishly by gas-light, puckered in the sunshine. It was a day for forgetting sadness and foregoing judgement. Nothing mattered but the caress on the back of your neck of your lover's hand or the mid-day sun, nothing mattered but the effervescence of the beer in your mouth or the water as you swam, nothing mattered but the sense that you were at the moment in full illumination, in focus.
Beatrice Colin, from her novel in progress, The Negative Cutter
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L'EFFERVESCENCE
Le soleil brillait quand elle quittait Berlin le matin, il semblerait être le plus glorieux jour de l’année 1927. Les chemises lavées étaient épinglées dans la cour et seront séchées avant le déjeuner. Les chats allongeaient sous l’ombre, les fenêtres lesquelles étaient fermées plus de mois aient finalement grandement ouvertes pour évacuées les innombrables odeurs de la nuit.
Les herbes dans le Tiergarten etaient couverts de costumes noirs, les hommes d’affaires étaient étendus au dehors de leur repos. Un groupe d’étudiants nus, prenaient le bain de soleil. Même les propriétaires de la ville, les veuves lesquelles ont perdu leurs fils dans la guerre mondiale et leurs filles dans l’épidémie de la grippe, étaient toutes sorties de leur balcon avec des visages peint en clair, plissés sous les rayons solaires. Cela n’avait pas d’importance quoi qu’il arrive. Rien n'importe que les caresses du nuque par la main de votre amant, en plein soleil. Rien que les effervescences de la bière dans votre bouche ou d’être mouillés après la nage, rien que le moment sur lequel vous vous étiez trouvé en toute l’illumination.
Beatrice Colin translated by Londi L. Beketch with the author
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Migrant
I am thinking of a distant cry,
that called to me, like the echo of a ripple,
bringing word of safety.
I think of two sure wings,
that would carry me to sanctuary.
And that sad time, when bonds were broken,
when the joy of candour and contact abandoned me.
I left my loved ones with parting wishes.
And I asked them to remember
that love is an immortal blessing.
Let hard times not make us forgetful of love.
And then, compelled to flee,
I left the silk road of the East
for the turbulent ways of the West.
Now, like a familiar stranger, or a strange familiar,
with kindness to offer, and the scent of acacia,
I say, ‘Here are my gifts of friendship, hope and laughter,
my generous hands, this heart brimful with love.’
Is there a person here, whose hand will join with mine
in friendship, who will offer a smile?
Mahmood Farzan translated by the author and David Nicol
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At the Rivers
On the sauch treis our harpis we hang,
Quhen thay requyrit vs ane sang,
That held us in sic thirldome;
Upon a thousand river banks they weep,
and memories return the sands of time.
In foreign lands their countless tears will seep,
as Wedderburn’s once joined in Elbe’s stream.
So salt will cleanse the bitterest of pain,
though human shoals, by trouble now, are swirled.
From persecution, war, and cruel disdain,
they reach the furthest places of the world.
Sit down by Clyde and Kelvin, Forth and Tay,
as Wedderburn found shelter once before.
Bring harps and voices, tune them for the day,
when home and comfort shall again be yours.
Let paving stones in Sauchiehall resound
with dancing feet, and shake the tyrant to the ground.
Notes
The lines quoted, in old Scots, could be read literally as: On the willow trees our harps we hung / When they required (from) us a song / That held us in such servitude.
They are from a version of Psalm 138, published in ‘The Gude and Godlie Ballates’ in1567 AD. These ballates, or songs and hymns, were collected by John and Robert Wedderburn, who lived in exile for many years prior to the Scottish Reformation.
The psalm is well known as a song, ‘By the Rivers of Babylon.’
The old Scots word sauch gives us the name of Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street.
David Nicol (translated into Farsi by Mahmood Farzan with the author)
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Pershkrimet e vellait tim Piktor
Tek ne bene fhohte.
Shkohet neper kafe apo bilardo,
behet zhurme, flitet me ze te lart,
pihet dhe ka tym …
Shume njerez nuk jan me aty.
Nje pjes e tyre nuk dihet ku jane.
Femijet shkojne ne shkoll, rriten pa lodra
dhe rrine neper rruge.
Neper rruge kalojne gra te ngarkuara,
ato flasin vazhdimisht dhe lindin shume femije.
Dasmat behen te medha, shoqerohen
edhe me krisma armesh, por, edhe ne
kto raste ka te vdekur.
Pjesmarja neper varrime eshte shume e madhe.
Njerzit levizin ngadal edhe
flasin me ze te ulet …
Shahin Memishi
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My Artist Brother’s Description
Where we are, it’s very cold.
People are heading for the cafes or the billiard-halls.
They are noisy places, full of loud voices,
Hard drinking, and the air is thick with smoke.
There’s a lot of people missing,
Nobody knows where some of them have gone.
Children go to school, grow up without toys,
Their lives are lived out on the street.
Women go past, carrying big burdens,
Talking all the time,
They’ve given birth to many children.
Weddings here are big and grand affairs,
The rifle shots are part of the celebration,
But at this event, a lot of people die.
Many guests too, at the funerals.
People are moving slowly, talking in low voices.
Shahin Memishi translated by the author and Morelle Smith
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Street Bus in Albania
The bus parked in the Rruga Deshmorit, Tirana,
has Elbgaustrasse written on the front.
I think about this bus, that’s in the wrong
street, wrong country, far from Elbgaustrasse’s leafy lanes -
so I imagine them, clean and tidy German streets, shaded
with protective linden trees.
The trees in Rruga Deshmorit were long ago cut down for fuel,
by a cold and starving population.
With no tree shade, the summer heat slows down all movement,
so that time itself has lost all impetus and energy,
and parked itself, it seems to me, beside the dazed bus,
which has lost its way.
But when autumn’s chill and early twilight comes,
shadows are seen flitting up and down the steps,
to the bus’s dark interior. People who are heading nowhere,
have no other place to go to, have turned it into home.
Small fires glow beside the bus,
cardboard, scraps of wood, abandoned litter,
anything that burns, feeds this small nomadic hearth,
this temporary terminus.
Morelle Smith
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Rruga e autobuzit ne shqiperi
Autobuzi qendroi tek rruga e deshmorit, Tirane,
ka Ellgaustrasse te shkruarr perpara.
Mendoj qe ky autobus do te jete
ne rruge te gabuar, ne shtet te gabuar,
larg nga rrugicat gjethore te Ellgaustrass’es –
keshtu i imagjinoj une ato, rruge Gjermane
te pastra, te rregullta,
me hijen e blinit qe i ruan ato.
Ne nje kohe pemet ne rrugen e deshmorit
u pren per dru zjarri
nga te ftohtit dhe uria e njerezve.
Pa hijen e pemeve vera e nxehte ngadalson levizjen,
Keshtu qe vetevetiu humbet vrulli dhe energjia,
the koha ndalon veten, me duket mua,
pran autobuzit te habitur
I cili ka humbur rrugen e vet.
Por kur vjeshta freskohet the muzgu heret vjen
hijet duken the zhduken lart e posht
shjalleve te autobuzit,
brenda ne erresire. Njerzit qe
fshihen asgjekundi, nuk kan vend tjeter te shkojne,
e kan shendruar ne shtepi.
Zjarre te vogla ndezur pran autobuzit
kartonat copeza druru, mbeturina te braktisura,
cdo gje qe digjet, ushqen kete vater te vogel shtegtuese,
kete fund te perkohshem
Morelle Smith, translated by Shahin Memishi with the author
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Parlando dell’affondamento dell’Arandora Star
I Bambini giocano a pallone per le strade
Romeo aspetta un amore che lo raggiunga dall’Italia
la Scozia lontana e… proteggerà i loro figli.
Dice il Sigaro: non c’è da preoccuparsi
ma Baffetto sta facendo guerra a tutti quanti
e per ora Camicia Nera sta solo a guardare.
Lo Zoppo corre ratto e scappa in Scozia
a nascondersi per salvar la gamba buona
e la radio gracchia: Camicia Nera è con Baffetto!
I Bambini per le strade giocano a nascondersi
il Giornalista s’ è già cambiato la camicia
in Scozia a testa alta dove nessuno lo conosce.
Ma la radio dà la caccia agli Italiani
il Sigaro, questo è da fare: arrestate
tutti i neri i bianchi i rossi, non importa.
Galera straniera e lo Zoppo è un Paralitico
e il giornalista… se salutavo alla romana…
Romeo – il suo amore è giunto in Scozia e non c’è più.
Sul ponte dell’Arandora Star ora corrono i Bambini
un boato dagli abissi li dissolve tra le onde tutti
e il Giornalista e lo Zoppo e Romeo senza un amore
mentre Baffo e Camicia si stringono la mano
e il Sigaro è spiacente.
Note
The Arandora Star, a troopship deporting Italian and German internees (some of whom had fled persecution by the Nazis) to Canada, was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland on 2nd July 1940 with the loss of 805 lives, most of them internees.
Alessandro Valensizi
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Talkin’ the Arandora Star
Kids playing football on the streets
Romeo awaits a love from Italy
Scotland far, far away… will protect their kids
The Cigar says: “You need not worry,”
but Little Moustache mongers war on everybody
while the Black Sark only watches… for now.
The Cripple skedaddles to Scotland
to hide and to save his good leg…
and the radio caws: Black Sark is with Moustache!
The kids play hide and seek
the Journalist has changed his shirt already,
head-high in Scotland where nobody knows him.
But the radio is hunting Italians
Cigar orders: “Collar the lot:
the black, the white, the red – all the same.”
A foreign gaol… the Cripple is perishing
the Journalist says: “If only I’d saluted the Roman way… ”
Romeo – his love comes to Scotland, in vain.
Now the kids run on the Arandora Star deck
a roar from the abyss dissolves all in the waves…
the Journalist, Cripple, and Romeo without love.
Meantime Sark and Moustache are shaking hands
and the Cigar feels terribly sorry…
Alessandro Valensizi translated by the author and Drew Campbell
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Bloody Foreigners
Dear Sir,
Standing in the kitchen of my castle my home the other day
I pierced the top of a tin of fruit, and a black toe popped out.
As the can opener cut around and around, I saw the toe had a foot
and the foot had a leg and the leg a body and the body a head
and the heads were many and all crammed inside my can of fruit.
I didn’t want my fruit after that so I buried the tin deep in a hole in the ground.
Still feeling peckish I unwrapped a bar full of Nestlé’s goodness, but the chocolate tasted of children’s skin, and the fondant centre oozed sickly sweet blood and soured baby milk. When I called the company to complain, however, the coltan in the microprocessors of my mobile phone howled the ghostly echoes of dead Congolese slaves, so loud… so loud. So loud I hung up. Besides, I’d been holding for ages!
To clear my head I went for a spin in my lovely new shiny new S U V…
only for the oil in the engine to clog with desecrated corpses of ruined lives and the carburettor rattle with ground-up bones of Arabs, and I lost control… I lost control and the damned thing crashed into an articulated lorry lined with illegal immigrants.
Later, in hospital, I awoke to Pakistani doctor instructing a Sudanese
nurse who chided a Brazilian porter who collided with a Polish
electrician repairing my broken heart…
monitor.
Then back home sweet home sweet home once more, where some fourth generation Irish social worker designated a Bulgarian cleaner to change my catheter and spoonfeed me some tasteless… steamed… cabbage.
So I ask: Isn’t it about time these bloody people
stood on their own…
two…
feet?
Drew Campbell
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Sangue straniero
Egregio Signore,
In piedi nella cucina del mio castello -casa mia, ho aperto una lattina di frutta, e ne è sbucato un alluce nero. Come l’apriscatole tagliava intorno intorno, ho visto che l’alluce aveva un piede e il piede aveva una gamba e la gamba un corpo e il corpo una testa e le teste erano molte e tutte ammassate nella mia lattina di frutta. Dopo ciò, non ho più voluto la frutta e ho sotterrato la lattina in una fossa profonda.
Avevo ancora appetito e ho aperto una confezione di delizie Nestlé, ma il cioccolato sapeva di pelle di bambini e il ripieno fluido trasudava sangue dolciastro e latte materno rancido versato sul pavimento. Ho preso il cellulare per chiamare la compagnia e lamentarmi, ma i circuiti
dei microprocessori ululavano echi spettrali di schiavi congolesi morti, così forte… così forte. Quindi ho appeso, quindi...
Quindi per sgombrarmi la mente sono andato a fare un giro col mio gippone nuovo di zecca... solo che l’olio ha grippato il motore e ruttato cadaveri dissacrati, e il carburatore rantolava d’ossa tritate di arabi, e ho perso... ho perso... ho perso il controllo e quel dannato coso s’è schiantato contro un TIR stipato di clandestini.
Poi in ospedale, mi sono svegliato con un medico cinese che dava ordini a un’infermiera senegalese che rimproverava un portantino marocchino che litigava con un elettricista albanese che riparava il monitor del mio cuore spezzato...
Poi sono tornato a casa dolce casa dolce casa ancora una volta, dove un qualche assistente sociale meridionale incaricava una domestica filippina di cambiarmi il catetere e di imboccarmi delle insipide... bollite... patate.
Quindi io chiedo: non è forse arrivato il momento che questo sangue straniero... cammini… con le proprie… gambe?
Drew Campbell translated by Alessandro Valensizi with the author
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WAXWINGS IN THE PARK
Variety is the spice of life
A flock of waxwings in the sycamore
sycamore in February in the park
park green and windswept in the city
city grey yet glistening in the east
east coast of Scotland facing Europe
Europe, Scandinavia and Siberia
Siberia which sends its icy greetings
icy greetings holding back the Spring
Spring to come, longer light and walks
walks in the park perhaps to glimpse
crested waxwings banded on the boughs.
In Scotland occasional winter visitors
visitors who wear distinctive colours
colourful from head to yellow tail
yellow tail and sealing-wax red tip
to every feather of the wings, wings
for chasing insects, beaks for berries
beret chestnut with the jaunty crest
pinstriped through in charcoal black
and black around the throat and blazing eye.
My eye surprises me in looking up
looking up and welcoming the migrants
migrants among our crows and starlings
our gulls accustomed to the slanting sun.
Tessa Ransford (translated into Arabic by Aiad Alhiatly with the author)
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QUEST AND QUESTION
Trains, where are you taking us
and where is the next station?
Shall we find we can stay there after this exodus?
Bleak platforms hand us over
to even bleaker ones;
we are propelled to a long-dreaded doom,
on our faces a lost look, not knowing where to head.
Trains hurl us into coaches
coaches into ferries
ferries into aeroplanes
aeroplanes into trains,
our footsteps trailing
heavy with defeat
in search of their fate.
No hand waves farewell as we leave
no smile lights the faces of children when we arrive.
Trains, where are you taking us?
We have grown weary
our hearts have dried out despite the rain,
we have grown older
and have no time left for dreams,
we have grown older
and grey has laid its signature on our hair
claiming its territory.
Trains, where are you taking us?
Take us where we can combat this frenetic journeying,
take us to an oasis
where we and others may rest
an oasis of serenity.
Trains
where
are
you
taking
us?
Aiad Alhiatly translated by the author and Tessa Ransford