DIVERSIFICATIONS:
MAYAKOVSKY, BRECHT AND ME
Shearsman Books. 88pp. £8.95
ISBN 9781848610446
Order from the Shearsman online bookstore
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Diversifications begins with an innovative
version of Mayakovsky’s A Clouds in Pants, where the original
bureaucratic terminology is updated into ‘management-speak’, and continues with
adaptations and responses to Brecht’s poems about the politics of work and
intimacy. Finally, in The Long Habit of Living, Young draws on
Baudelaire and Verlaine, to write about his own mortality.
Translation is one poet’s
attempt to understand another. Young, with Diversifications, moves
beyond this into a form of collaboration: ‘No poet is an island. Making poetry
is a matter of promontories. Imitating fellow practitioners is the sterile one.
The fertile promontory is engagement with poets who seem to offer a jetty.’
Diversifications cover: Tall Writing Table, 120x80cms, oil on
canvas, by Huib Fens, reproduced by permission of the artist. Copyright © Huib Fens, 2008
EXTRACTS
from WORKING POEMS WITH BERTOLT BRECHT
The
Passenger
After Der Insasse (1935)
When years ago I learned to
drive a car
my instructor made me smoke
a cigar
and if in heavy traffic it
went dead
he took the wheel from me
and drove instead.
He made good jokes to
measure my control
and if I did not laugh like
Old King Cole
he spoke of passengers and
how they feel
when drivers are deadset.
And took the wheel.
Since then when working I
keep half an eye
open to the world around
me, and try
to pay attention to my
fellow man,
and don’t forget myself and
where I am.
Driving too hard to smoke a
cool cigar
is hazardous in life as in
a car.
I distract myself when the
passions stir.
The good driver thinks of
the passenger.
Friends
After Das
Abschied (1937)
We embrace in the street.
I smell your aftershave.
Does my stubble cut you?
My hands brush your serge suit.
You don’t disdain my rags.
We are in a hurry.
You’re off for a good meal.
And I am on the run.
We speak of umbrellas
and enduring friendship.
More would be unbearable.
from
THE LONG HABIT OF LIVING
‘The
long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.’
Sir
Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia,1658
A Maker of Light Verse Having a Sunny Time
‘Flairant dans tous les coins les hasards de la
rime,
Trébuchant sur les mots comme sur les pavés,
Heurtant parfois des vers depuis longtemps rêvés.’
Baudelaire, 'Le Soleil', Les Fleurs du Mal
I see myself as others do. They accept me
now as an old man, not without his vanity,
who’s allowed to kiss the bride and hold the
baby
and is honoured for grey beard’s humanity
and parting sadness. Someone who life is
leaving.
Montaigne, you said life was all about the
good death.
Didn’t you hesitate on the threshold of
believing
that life is good in itself, and let live
this let?
‘I leave the fruits of my studies for death
to taste.
We shall see if I speak from the mouth or
the heart.’
These are not the words of a sad soul who
has chased
life into a grave and jumps in to die apart.
Blaise Pascal chose not to think about death
at all,
rather than fake a happy one. A Jansenist
believes that nothing better than life can
befall
a human sinner, unless it is not to exist.
But I’m with Montaigne who did not give in
to ‘the terrible bite of necessity’ in the
dark.
He faced it with a calm mind, peacefully
living
in the hope that when he came home his dog
would bark.
Nor did he abandon the life his youth once
wished
would surprise him, but sadly watched it to
the close,
suffering family feuds and kidney stones. He
kissed
the scarecrow in the mirror and thumbed his
nose.
The sons that he brought up by his own book
were blind
to his wisdom and joined their mother to
rescind
a quiet life. So be it. Knowledge is never
mind.
‘We grasp at everything but catch nothing
save wind.’