GLADYS, Nonsense Verse from the book, HERE WE BE. WHERE BE WE?

                                                                      Hindu Goddess Kali

Gladys

We feed a cow on fat feed fodder;

We fat the cow, then eat her.

We fat all creatures else to fat us,

And we fat ourselves for Gladys.

 

We feed a sow soft sodden fodder;

We fat the sow, then sup her.

We fatten sows to fat ourselves,

Then Gladys sups ourselves for supper.

 

O woe is us, the fact is sad is

That old Gladys is so glad is

Gladys that we fat and pad us;

 

We fat the piglets, calves to fat us;

But in the end we’re chomped by Gladys.

Just a munch and a crunch and a gulp and she’s had us:

Old green-bellied greedy-gutted great-gobbed Gladys.

[excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, HERE WE BE. WHERE BE WE? IN THE SHITSTORM YEAR OF 2020]

THE BREAD WETTER, from Bobby Goosey's Nonsense Verse for Kids

 

 The Bread Wetter

Little Joe Tomato has a problem,

He’s seeing Dr. Pediatrician Wing.

His problem’s not with food or malnutritioning

(He gets a lot to eat; he’s plump and red).

His problem’s not with social malconditioning

(He intermingles well with peers, so his teacher said).

It isn’t that he sleeps too deep and sometimes wets the bed.

No. But in a rye-bread sandwich Joey wets the bread instead.

Little Joe Tomato wets the bread.

from Bobby Goosey's Nonsense Verse for Kids

Translation of Poem by Nikolai Zabolotsky, Николай Заболоцкий, "Ласточка," THE SWALLOW

 

Николай Заболоцкий

(1903-1958)

 

Ласточка

Славно ласточка щебечет,
Ловко крыльями стрижет,
Всем ветрам она перечит,
Но и силы бережет.
Реет верхом, реет низом,
Догоняет комара
И в избушке под карнизом
Отдыхает до утра.

Удивлен ее повадкой,
Устремляюсь я в зенит,
И душа моя касаткой
В отдаленный край летит.
Реет, плачет, словно птица,
В заколдованном краю,
Слабым клювиком стучится
В душу бедную твою.

Но душа твоя угасла,
На дверях висит замок.
Догорело в лампе масло,
И не светит фитилек.
Горько ласточка рыдает
И не знает, как помочь,
И с кладбища улетает
В заколдованную ночь.

1958

 

 

d

 

Literal Translation

 

The Swallow

 

Gloriously the swallow chirps,

Skillfully clips with her wings,

Opposes all the winds,

But preserves her strength.

Flits up, flits down,

Overtakes a mosquito,

And in her little hut beneath the cornice

Rests until the morning.

 

Struck by her behavior,

I rush out into the zenith,

And my soul, hirundine now,

Flies off to distant lands.

It flits, weeps, as a bird does,

In that enchanted realm,

With weak little beak it pecks

At your poor soul.

 

But your soul has expired,

A lock hangs on the doors.

The oil in the lamp has burned down,

And the little wick does not gleam.

Bitterly the swallow sobs

And does not know how to help,

And from the graveyard flies off

Into the enchanted night.

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

The Swallow

 

Through the world chirps the swallow un-chagrined,

Her wings slice the air with consummate perfection; 

Intrepid she fends off the fiercest of winds,

Preserving her strength, never prone to dejection.

Up she flits, down she flits, to the sky’s edge,

Snaps up a mosquito in mid-swoop, and diving,

Into her hovel she scoots neath the ledge;

She’ll rest there till sunrise, at ease with life, thriving.

 

In thrall to her stalwart and sprightly panache,

I set off in search of some far Land of Beulah;

My soul is hirundine, in yearning awash,

Can it be that I’ll find you in Ultima Thule?

My essence swoops up with an avian twitter,

Seeks sustenance, perches on wonderland knoll,

Finds what could be you in a dim spot aglitter,

With its weak little beak pecks at your forlorn soul.

 

But your soul, woe is me, has relinquished all glimmer,

On the door of your lifeforce there hangs a dire lock.

The oil in the lamp has burned down, lost its shimmer,

And the dark has the wick in a wretched headlock. 

The swallow sobs bitterly, tweets out despair,

For she has not a clue how to be of assistance;

With a gurgle-twit cry she goes swoop through the air,

From the graveyard and off into night’s grim persistence.   

 

 

 

Translation of Poem by Nikolai Zabolotsky, Николай Заболоцкий, "Уступи мне, скворец, уголок," "LET ME LODGE, STARLING BIRD, IN YOUR BIRDHOUSE COLUMBARY"

Starling Murmuration in Ireland, James Crombie Photo

Nikolai Zabolotsky

(1903-1958)

 

                         Уступи мне, скворец, уголок

Уступи мне, скворец, уголок,
Посели меня в старом скворешнике.
Отдаю тебе душу в залог
За твои голубые подснежники.

 

И свистит и бормочет весна.
По колено затоплены тополи.
Пробуждаются клены от сна,
Чтоб, как бабочки, листья захлопали.

И такой на полях кавардак,
И такая ручьев околесица,
Что попробуй, покинув чердак,
Сломя голову в рощу не броситься!

Начинай серенаду, скворец!
Сквозь литавры и бубны истории
Ты — наш первый весенний певец
Из березовой консерватории.

Открывай представленье, свистун!
Запрокинься головкою розовой,
Разрывая сияние струн
В самом горле у рощи березовой.

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да шепнула мне бабочка-странница:
«Кто бывает весною горласт,
Тот без голоса к лету останется».

 

А весна хороша, хороша!
Охватило всю душу сиренями.
Поднимай же скворешню, душа,
Над твоими садами весенними.

 

Поселись на высоком шесте,
Полыхая по небу восторгами,
Прилепись паутинкой к звезде
Вместе с птичьими скороговорками.

Повернись к мирозданью лицом,
Голубые подснежники чествуя,
С потерявшим сознанье скворцом
По весенним полям путешествуя.

 1946

                                                                                  d

 

Literal Translation

Let me have, starling, a little corner,

Lodge me in your old starling bird-house.

I’ll put down my soul as collateral

In exchange for your sky-blue snowdrops.

 

Spring is whistling, murmuring.

The poplar trees are up to their knees in water.

The maples are awakening from their sleep,

In order to flap their leaves like butterflies.

 

And there’s such hurly-burly in the fields,

And the brooks are in such a rigmarole,

That just try abandoning your garret room

And not rushing headlong out into the grove!

 

Begin the serenade, starling!

Through the kettledrums and tambourines of history

You are our first spring singer

From the birch tree conservatory.

 

Open the performance, whistler!

Throw back your rosy little head,

Ripping asunder the glitter of strings

In the very throat of the birch grove.

 

I’d be inclined to give it a shot myself,

But a little pilgrim-butterfly whispered to me:

“He who gets loud-mouthed in the springtime

By summer finds himself without a voice.”

 

But the spring is fine, so fine!

All of my soul feels enveloped in lilacs.

Raise high your birdhouse, soul,

Over your springtime gardens.

 

Settle in on the top of a high pole,

Spread coruscations of bliss over the sky,

Attach yourself by a spiderweb to a star

Together with tongue-twister cries of the birds.

 

Turn your head and face the world,

Paying honor to the sky-blue snowdrops,

With the starling who has lost consciousness

Sojourning across the vernal fields.

 

                                                             James Crombie Photo

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Let me lodge, starling-bird, in your birdhouse columbary.

Move me in, lock and stock, to your starling hidey-hole.

Bring me some snowdrops sky-blue, don’t be wary.

You can have a lien-note on my introverted soul.

 

Spring whistles and mutters its murmurings vernal.

Poplar trees are standing in the water up to knees.

Maples yawn and stretch awake from sleepy-time hibernal;

They flap their leaves like butterflies in breeze.

And the fields writhe in such a zealous spring commotion,

And the brooks are babbling total wacko balderdash;

Can I sit all cooped up inside and not succumb to motion?

No! Breakneck to the birch groves I must dash.

Serenade me, feathered fowl, commence to singing, starling!

Let the tambourines and drumbeats ding and pound;

You’re the first spring warbler in the woodsy choir, darling,

Summa cum alumnus of the birch-school in the round.

 

Birdie songster, launch your vernal chirp-and-cheep routine!

Proudly raise your pinkish head and sing out raucously;

Rip and tear the sinews from the chords that glitter-gleam

In the lusty throat of every birch grove bird that be.

 

Thought I’d like myself to maybe try to have a go,

But a passing butterfly lit on my ear and shushed:

“He who chirps and twitters loud in any spring meadow,

Come the summer finds his voice is hoarse and sadly hushed.”  

 

But spring’s a ball, a fest held high on eagle’s lofty aerie,

My soul is floating free, exulting, fully lilac-swathed.

Raise up, dear soul, to heaven’s heights your brilliant columbary,

O’er gardens that in vernal mist are gently, softly bathed.

 

Make your home, breath of life, on a tall pole far-bizarre,

Spreading spangled bliss and rapture through the skies;

Cast out a gossamer, latch on a polestar,

You and your gibble-and-gabble bird cries.

 

Turn your head now, face to face with universe and nation, 

Say a prayer for snowdrops, to their sky-blue bow and scrape,

Join the starling birdie as he swoons in murmuration, 

Take a swoop-ride with the swarm o’er lustrous spring landscape.

 

 

d

 

Translator’s Notes

 

Commentary in Russian below is from the Website stikhi-rus.ru; here, in English, are some of the most salient points:

 

Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-1958) fell into the maw of the Stalinist terror, spending some seven years in concentration camps and exile. In 1946, thanks to the influence of Aleksandr Fadeev, head of the Soviet Writers Union, he was allowed to return to Moscow, but had no roof over his head. The writer V.P. Ilenkov, a man of magnanimous and generous character, offered Zabolotsky his dacha at the writers’ colony of Peredelkino. As Nikolai Chukovsky recalls, “the birch grove had an ineffable charm, teeming with birds, and it extended right up to Ilenkov’s dacha.” One can only imagine with what exultation Zabolotsky, newly freed from his ordeal, contemplated the meadows and birds, when he wrote the exuberant poem about starlings, snowdrops and birches in the spring of 1946.

 

Stalin, however, still had seven years to live, and once having experienced Stalinist repression, one does not soon forget. Zabolotsky’s son mentions how the poet revised the sixth stanza, “softening its too autobiographical tone.” Here’s how the original read:

 

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да облезли от холода перышки.
Если смолоду будешь горласт,
Перехватит дыхание в горлышке –

 

Literal Translation:

Thought I’d like myself to have a go,

But my feathers have thinned out in the cold.

If you get too loudmouthed in your youth

Your breath tends to catch in your throat.

 

d

Анализ стихотворения.

В 1946 году благодаря заступничеству Фадеева поэт Николай Заболоцкий вернулся из ссылки. Страдания семи долгих лагерных и ссыльных лет были наконец-то позади. Не было только крыши над головой. Писатель
В.П. Ильенков - человек отважного и великодушного характера - любезно предоставил Заболоцким свою дачу в Переделкине.
Николай Чуковский вспоминает: "березовая роща неизъяснимой прелести, полная птиц, подступала к самой даче Ильенкова". Об этой березовой роще в 1946 году поэт напишет дважды:

Открывай представленье, свистун!
Запрокинься головкою розовой,
Разрывая сияние струн
В самом горле у рощи березовой.
("Уступи мне, скворец, уголок").

Многочисленные аллитерации ("Уступи мне, скворец, уголок, / Посели меня
в старом скворечнике..."), и повторы глаголов ("Уступи...",
"Посели...", "Начинай...", "Открывай...", "Запрокинься...",
"Поднимай...", "Поселись...", "Прилепись...", "Повернись..."),
рифмующихся по горизонтали и вертикали.

И не случайно на этом звуковом фоне в стихотворении "Уступи мне, скворец, уголок" возникает ряд "музыкальных метафор": здесь и "серенада", и "литавры", и "бубны", и "Березовая консерватория", и "струны".

Уступи мне, скворец, уголок,
Посели меня в старом скворечнике.
Отдаю тебе душу в залог
За твои голубые подснежники...
Повернись к мирозданью лицом,
Голубые подснежники чествуя,
С потерявшим сознанье скворцом
По весенним полям путешествую.

Интересное сравнение первоначального и окончательного вариантов шестой строфы в стихотворении "Уступи мне, скворец, уголок", написанного в 1946 году. Сталин проживет еще около семи лет, и Заболоцкий (лагерные воспоминания держали поэта в состоянии вечного страха) исправит, по свидетельству его сына Никиты Николаевича, шестую строфу, "смягчив слишком автобиографическое ее звучание". Первоначальный вариант строфы:

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да облезли от холода перышки.
Если смолоду будешь горласт,
Перехватит дыхание в горлышке -

Преобразился (не став лучше!) таким образом:

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да шепнула мне бабочка-странница:
"Кто бывает весною горласт,
Тот без голоса к лету останется".

У Заболоцкого своя манера повествования, философский взгляд на мир, на окружающую природу. Он видит, как все на земле взаимосвязано и хрупко. Поэт сознает себя составной частью этого прекрасного и гармоничного мира. В сознании поэта природа и человек неразрывно связаны. Они дополняют друг друга, порой вступают в конфликт, но не могут существовать один без другого. Произведения Заболоцкого, посвященные природе, различаются по своим настроениям, чувствам. Постоянным остается лишь одно -сознание величия природы, ее необходимости для человека, который является ее сыном и в то же время ее творцом.
Стихотворения поэта заставляют и нас задуматься, иначе взглянуть на окружающий мир.

 

 

 video presentation/reading on the YouTube website "Pink Lady":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ4Zn0QPG4c&ab_channel=PinkLady

On Nonsense Verse, from the book "Here We Be. Where Be We?" Nonsense Poem: "The Year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows"

 

Nonsense Becoming Sense Becoming Nonsense Sense

Probably the most underrated kind of literary writing is nonsense verse. People think it’s just silly and nothing else but silly. But great nonsense verse has a way of showing language on the verge of becoming nonsensical madness, which then, somehow, creeps up onto the verge of making sense, and then—if everything works out perfectly—crawls over into some higher realm of transcendent truth.

 

The Year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows

In the year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows

The stars may have frozen; the moon may have froze;

Do you know? Does he know? Do we know? Who knows

What life will be like in Nineteen No One Knows?

 

That poem was, obviously, written before the turn of the century and the turn of the millennium. For we’re now into the year 2020 + No One Knows.

In the year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows

We may have departed for places one goes.

Do we know? Does anyone know? No. Who knows

Where we could all be in Nineteen No One Knows?

Does anyone know what it’s like where one goes,

If one doesn’t last till Nineteen No One Knows?

You mean no one but no one but nobody knows?

Then I think I’ll stay here with blue bows on my toes,

 

In the sun, wearing bows on my toes and no clothes,

Not no clothes but just bows on my big crooked toes,

And I’ll bask in the sun without worries or woes,

Till the year Twenty Hundred and Nobody Knows.

[Excerpt from the book by U.R. Bowie, HERE WE BE. WHERE BE WE? IN THE SHITSTORM YEAR OF 2020]

The Poetaster's Plaint, from "Bobby Goosey’s Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense"

 

 

 

 

 

The Poetaster’s Plaint

or

Sad Poem About What A Shame It Is When A Poet’s Poem Peters Out

 

I was rhyming along, going strong, had it made,

With a dash of panache and fierce rodomontade,

Persiflage, badinage in a two-car garage,

What a writer, such a rhymester, poetaster to a T!

Then my poem petered out on me . . .

 

Nothing left, half-assed rhymes, just a treacly metre.

No more dash of panache, but a pinch of saltpeter;

Yes, my poem petered out . . .

Ignominiously . . .

My poem petered out . . .

On me . . .

 

 From Bobby Goosey’s Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense

WAR, From "Bobby Goosey’s Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense"

 

War

 

An ox and some oxen were axing (swinging axes).

The ox was axing the oxen and

The oxen were axing the ox.

And while the oxen axed the ox,

And while the ox axed the oxen,

The oxen were asking,

“Why are we axing an ox?”

And the ox was asking,

“Why am I axing oxen?”

And they all went on asking,

The ox and all the oxen,

They all went on asking,

But they didn’t stop axing (swinging axes).

 

From Bobby Goosey’s Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense