After Dransfield
The night, cool green,
The night, cool green,
tastes of air.
The sea moves beneath;
waves wind and tide coordinate.
Sniff the bougainvillea:
the South Pacific,
the purple islands.
A cloud ... a beach....
Something about wine –
and already the stones
of court and temple
different, mourning.
At dVerse Poetics – Covers we are asked to do a 'cover' of someone else's poem, using their words but in some way making them one's own. I wanted to pay tribute to Michael Dransfield, but it was hard – his poems are all so perfect just as they are. In the end I decided on an erasure poem taken from my favourite, 'Patricia's Raga', using part of its subtitle as my title. (And I slightly changed the last word.) It still feels rather sacrilegious! But I hope it leads you to the hauntingly beautiful original.
Beautiful piece, Rosemary. So much beauty in the first part, but then the melancholy in the end is very powerful
ReplyDeleteThis is vibrant with a sense of past, nostalgia for all the senses.
ReplyDeleteNovember
ReplyDeletegrey
beach
breeze
of North
sweeping
still wind
dry fly days away
bite of Winter sweeter
than
bite
of fly..:)
Oh thak you, I love this!
DeleteOh so lovely, especially your closing lines. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteThank you for letting us drift with you
ReplyDeleteI like the scents here - night cool green and bougainvilla~ The ending is in contrast with the wine and mourning ~
ReplyDeleteThanks everybody – and I do hope you click the link to read the original. None of these are my words, only my selection of Dransfield's, which is a longer, richer poem.
ReplyDeletethe South Pacific,
ReplyDeletethe purple islands.
A cloud ... a beach....
Great write Rosemary! An insight into a little of the South Pacific!
Hank
Rosemary -- thanx for noting the link issue on my post -- fixed, plus more.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I enjoyed both your erasure of Dransfield and his original. Having spent 12 years in Asia -- mainly India and Japan (but some time in Indonesia), the original poem floods me with images and thoughts. But I must say, such poems which seem as mere montages of feeling and images, are not my favorite. And I wonder how people read past all the words they don't know -- in this poem I had to look up the plant, the rest (because of my background) I knew. But my experience is that people read right by stuff they don't know. Your version was less packed (being an erasure) and so just the right amounts of image sharing. Thanx for the intro to this poet, I will take a peek at a few more of his works.
Ah well, he was writing at the time for Australians, and we are familiar with bougainvillea here. And in that era we also understood sitar, kamikaze, divine wind, and even sarod and tablas (NOT, as misprinted at the link, sarod and tables, lol). I'm glad you enjoyed both versions.
DeletePS In Dransfield I particularly love the music of his words, even more than the images and feelings he evokes.
DeleteBTW, Rosemary -- the Astrolab is also part of my avatar.
ReplyDeleteHa, so it is!
DeleteThis is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteOh, Rosemary, I love this - it's so appealing to the senses, calming and exotic. Bravo!
ReplyDelete