Daily April poem: a "translation"
April 18, 2013
DRUNK
Whatever: bewig yourself with volts,
hit the sauce this evening, go vague.
It renders me villainous, sere and low.
I'm dishy, muddled, made of raw helter-skelter.
Follow me. This place is a zoo.
Empty your glass, empty your glass,
empty your glass.
This poem began its life as a "translation" of The Bee-Keeper by Hungarian poet István Kemény (per a challenge from the NaPoWriMo folks). I don't speak Hungarian, so I rendered the syllables in rough approximation, based on their sounds. Then refined and smoothed the "translation" a few times.
I wound up with a poem about getting hammered. It has absolutely nothing to do with the original poem (which is beautiful and worth reading!) -- but it's an interesting short piece which I wouldn't have written if I hadn't started out with my phonic rendering of the unfamiliar Hungarian words.