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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
__________
TPB's notes: found notes, more or less:
The Second Coming was written in 1919 in the aftermathof the first World War.
The above version of the poem is as it was published in the edition 'Michael Robartes and the Dancer' dated 1920 (there are numerous other versions of the poem)…and has a page break between lines17 and 18 making the stanza division unclear. Earlier drafts have thirty centuries instead of twenty as well as references to the French and Irish Revolutions as well as the Germany and Russia. Several of the lines in the version above differ from those found in subsequent versions. In listing it as one of the hundred most anthologized poems in the English language, the text given by Harmon (1998) has changes including: line 13 (": somewhere in sands of the desert"), line 17 ("Reel" instead of "Wind"), and no break between the second and third stanza.
__________________
DAVID RUBADIRI
An Africa Thunderstorm
From the west
Clouds come hurrying with the wind
Turning sharply
Here and there
Like a plague of locusts
Whirling,
Tossing up things on its tail
Like a madman chasing nothing.
Pregnant clouds
Ride stately on its back,
Gathering to perch on hills
Like sinister dark wings;
The wind whistles by
And trees bend to let it pass.
In the village
Screams of delighted children,
Toss and turn
In the din of the whirling wind,
Women,
Babies clinging on their backs
Dart about
In and out
Madly;
The wind whistles by
Whilst trees bend to let it pass.
Clothes wave like tattered flags
Flying off
To expose dangling breasts
As jagged blinding flashes
Rumble, tremble and crack
Amidst the smell of fired smoke
And the pelting march of the storm.
An Africa Thunderstorm
From the west
Clouds come hurrying with the wind
Turning sharply
Here and there
Like a plague of locusts
Whirling,
Tossing up things on its tail
Like a madman chasing nothing.
Pregnant clouds
Ride stately on its back,
Gathering to perch on hills
Like sinister dark wings;
The wind whistles by
And trees bend to let it pass.
In the village
Screams of delighted children,
Toss and turn
In the din of the whirling wind,
Women,
Babies clinging on their backs
Dart about
In and out
Madly;
The wind whistles by
Whilst trees bend to let it pass.
Clothes wave like tattered flags
Flying off
To expose dangling breasts
As jagged blinding flashes
Rumble, tremble and crack
Amidst the smell of fired smoke
And the pelting march of the storm.
__________
TPB's notes: from 'A Selection Of African Poetry' published by Longman, this poem is often cited as 'one of Africa’s most widely anthologised poem'.
__________________
EDIP CANSEVER
That´s What I Call a Table
A man filled with the gladness of living
Put his keys on the table,
Put flowers in a copper bowl there.
He put his eggs and milk on the table.
He put there the light that came in through the window,
Sound of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel.
The softness of bread and weather he put there.
On the table the man put
Things that happened in his mind.
What he wanted to do in life,
He put that there.
Those he loved, those he didn´t love,
The man put them on the table too.
Three times three make nine:
The man put nine on the table.
He was next to the window next to the sky;
He reached out and placed on the table endlessness.
So many days he had wanted to drink a beer!
He put on the table the pouring of that beer.
He placed there his sleep and his wakefulness;
His hunger and his fullness he put there.
Now that´s what I call a table!
It didn´t complain at all about the load.
It wobbled once or twice, then stood firm.
The man kept piling things on.
IN THE TURKISH:
EDIP CANSEVER
Masa Da Masaymış Ha
Adam yaşama sevinci içinde
Masaya anahtarlarını koydu
Bakır kâseye çiçekleri koydu
Sütünü yumurtasını koydu
Pencereden gelen ışığı koydu
Bisiklet sesini çıkrık sesini
Ekmeğin havanın yumuşaklığını koydu
Adam masaya
Aklında olup bitenleri koydu
Ne yapmak istiyordu hayatta
İşte onu koydu
Kimi seviyordu kimi sevmiyordu
Adam masaya onları da koydu
Üç kere üç dokuz ederdi
Adam koydu masaya dokuzu
Pencere yanındaydı gökyüzü yanında
Uzandı masaya sonsuzu koydu
Bir bira içmek istiyordu kaç gündür
Masaya biranın dökülüşünü koydu
Uykusunu koydu uyanıklığını koydu
Tokluğunu açlığını koydu
Masa da masaymış ha
Bana mısın demedi bu kadar yüke
Bir iki sallandı durdu
Adam ha babam koyuyordu.
(transl: mr and ms tillinghast)
That´s What I Call a Table
A man filled with the gladness of living
Put his keys on the table,
Put flowers in a copper bowl there.
He put his eggs and milk on the table.
He put there the light that came in through the window,
Sound of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel.
The softness of bread and weather he put there.
On the table the man put
Things that happened in his mind.
What he wanted to do in life,
He put that there.
Those he loved, those he didn´t love,
The man put them on the table too.
Three times three make nine:
The man put nine on the table.
He was next to the window next to the sky;
He reached out and placed on the table endlessness.
So many days he had wanted to drink a beer!
He put on the table the pouring of that beer.
He placed there his sleep and his wakefulness;
His hunger and his fullness he put there.
Now that´s what I call a table!
It didn´t complain at all about the load.
It wobbled once or twice, then stood firm.
The man kept piling things on.
IN THE TURKISH:
EDIP CANSEVER
Masa Da Masaymış Ha
Adam yaşama sevinci içinde
Masaya anahtarlarını koydu
Bakır kâseye çiçekleri koydu
Sütünü yumurtasını koydu
Pencereden gelen ışığı koydu
Bisiklet sesini çıkrık sesini
Ekmeğin havanın yumuşaklığını koydu
Adam masaya
Aklında olup bitenleri koydu
Ne yapmak istiyordu hayatta
İşte onu koydu
Kimi seviyordu kimi sevmiyordu
Adam masaya onları da koydu
Üç kere üç dokuz ederdi
Adam koydu masaya dokuzu
Pencere yanındaydı gökyüzü yanında
Uzandı masaya sonsuzu koydu
Bir bira içmek istiyordu kaç gündür
Masaya biranın dökülüşünü koydu
Uykusunu koydu uyanıklığını koydu
Tokluğunu açlığını koydu
Masa da masaymış ha
Bana mısın demedi bu kadar yüke
Bir iki sallandı durdu
Adam ha babam koyuyordu.
(transl: mr and ms tillinghast)
______
TPB's notes: recent news says this poem has just been censored by the Turkish government. We don't understand why. Or they say it is because the poet mentioned 'beer'. Lucky those poets with nations to censor their poems! Turkey has just made a very good poem intriguing.
Background:In 2013, Turkish Publishers Association President Metin Celal Zeynioğlu sent out a message to the poetry world that the repressive practices of the reign of the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamit are about to be repeated. Why? Poems selected to be read by schools across Turkey were censored for having anti or non 'Islamic' elements. The poem TABLE by the Turkish poet, Edip Cansever, was cut in two for including the offensive word of 'beer'. TPB shares it here. It is a wonderful poem.
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