The aim of this blog is to serve as a meeting point to those who study or have studied English philology and, more broadly, to all those who love literature and language.

31 Dec 2008

HAPPY NEW YEAR

These are just some poems to celebrate the beginning of a new year and wish Poe readers and anyone who may drop by this blog a HAPPY 2009.

New Year on Dartmoor by Sylvia Plath

This is newness: every little tawdry
Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,
Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only you
Don't know what to make of the sudden slippiness,
The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.
There's no getting up it by the words you know.
No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.
We have only come to look. You are too new
To want the world in a glass hat.

Año Nuevo en Dartmoor

En esto consiste la novedad: en cada pequeño y chabacano
obstáculo recubierto de cristal, cada uno con su peculiaridad,
centelleando y tintinando con falsete de santo. Tan sólo tú
no sabes qué hacer con este repentino terreno resbaladizo,
con este ciego, blanco, espantoso, inaccesible declive.
no hay manera de aprehenderlo con las palabras que conoces.
No hay manera de llegar a él, ni en elefante, ni sobre ruedas, ni a pie.
Nosotros hemos venido aquí tan solo a mirar, y tú eres demasiado nueva
como para querer el mundo en un sombrero de cristal.

Spanish version: Poesía Completa, Bartleby Editores, 2008

Ring Out, Wild Bells by Alfred Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.


And these are two recordings of Auld Land Syne, the popular poem by Robert Burns. The second one is a Japanese version called 蛍の光 and read as "Hotaru no Hikari" (lights of fireflies). Source: Wikipedia.

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