This morning I was missing Merwin, and I needed to read something new by someone else—another Merwin lover—to get me over the heap of another day.
I found it here. Mille mercis, Devin.
For readers of Merwin, new & old, beyond his poetry, his book of translations is also exquisite. I remember reading his translation of Hadrian’s animula vagula blandula , which blew me away! Many years previous I had read a French translation of it in Marguerite Yourcenar’s Mémoires d’Hadrien. Yourcenar’s translation, was nothing compared to Merwin’s. Here is Merwin’s:
This morning I was missing Merwin, and I needed to read something new by someone else—another Merwin lover—to get me over the heap of another day.
I found it here. Mille mercis, Devin.
For readers of Merwin, new & old, beyond his poetry, his book of translations is also exquisite. I remember reading his translation of Hadrian’s animula vagula blandula , which blew me away! Many years previous I had read a French translation of it in Marguerite Yourcenar’s Mémoires d’Hadrien. Yourcenar’s translation, was nothing compared to Merwin’s. Here is Merwin’s:
Little Soul
by Hadrian
Little soul little stray
little drifter
now where will you stay
all pale and all alone
after the way
you used to make fun of things