Ash Wednesday

To celebrate Ash Wednesday this coming Wednesday, Feb 22nd, 2012, I had a good start in translating T.S.Eliot's 'Ash Wednesday'. I am rather pleased with it so far

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

《聖灰星期三》- 叶澍苍 释译

因为我不再乞求变卦
因为我不乞求
因为我不乞求变卦
渴望拥有此人的天才和彼人的天赋
我不再努力不再费心于這些琐事
（为何老鷹必然想要展開翅膀？）
為什麼我必需哀悼
人权，人命与人性的自然完了？

God only knows how many revisions the above translation has gone through. It was such fun of doing it though. Next, I'd like to seek Chinese corporation sponsorship to have as many participants as possible in my project of translating this great work of English literature into Chinese.

A literary Journal for Mercer County Area High School Students

Kristina Languione
Allentown High School Grade 12

Secrets Do Not Exist

If you reveal your secrets to the wind,
Do not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees,
And if you think the wind's done no such thing,
You probably could find out from the bees.
Or maybe the birds heard while passing over them,
And whispered it to the worm when they snatched its head.
Because you'll never really ever know
Who knows what and who told them so.
Or who heard that and twisted it around.
And who made it a lie, or has never heard a sound.
So if you reveal your secrets to the wind,
Do not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
When you tell somebody's secret, you're as good as a thief.

I Think That There Is Something Missing

Tonight I just feel like I'm missing a part of me,
Like my body's missing something it simply needs,
Itching a phantom limb can be pretty scary
And it's a quivering, awakening thought.

Tonight I just feel like I'm not who I used to be,
Like I've convicted so many I know or meet,
After a while you drift too far to see,
That insignificant place called start.

So tonight it's okay to say you don't belong,
Whether you're missing a leg or an arm,
You will find a part to attach right on.
It won't feel real, but it's easy.

Hi Badvogato

Because I do not hope to turn again
-> verbatim translation of G.Cavalcanti
-> Perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai


Because I do not hope
-> ditto but truncated

Because I do not hope to turn
-> ditto but truncates less


Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
-> a minor mod from Shakespeare's Sonnet 29
-> Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things
->

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
->

Why should I mourn
->

The vanished power of the usual reign?
->


Can you help me fill in the remaining blank of magpie TSE?
code reuse or what???

I am taking a free online course from arrayForth Institute. What's up with you, any breakthrough lately?

Prof. Brian Kernighan kindly wrote me back about a potential quote I contributed to his class 'Why (In)numeracy matters'. It's a quotation stealing from another book 'IDEOGRAM - Chinese Characters and the myths of disembodied meaning' by J.Marshall Unger.

1. Or to quote the jolting warning my colleague Galal Walker gives students:"If you study Chinese with the goal of making Chinese listen to the same stuff you say in English to Americans, you're just learning how to piss off a billion people the hard way."

T.S.Eliot's four quartet hasn't been in-tune with my ears yet. But we'll see.

someone says that 'To understand something, one takes it apart. To love something, one has to put it back together again.'

Badvogato's Chinese rendition sings more towards 'Ash Wednesday' than TSE's art hand-molested by Ezra Pound ;-)

Carroll V. Glindes book 'Attach on Yamamoto' was a good read. Thanks to Americans, 山本五十六 will forever live in minds and hearts of Japanese and Chinese alike as a great warrior alongside ducks and peacock among American Navy's chain-of-command. The codebreakers are another story for a later time.

How fitting that battles were fought on Easter Eves? Muriel Rukeyser's poem 'Easter Eve 1945' comes to mind:

Wary of time O it seizes the soul tonight

I wait for the great morning of the west

confessing with every breath mortality.

Moon of this wild sky struggles to stay whole

and on the water silvers the ships of war.

I go alone in the black-yellow light

all night waiting for day, while everywhere the sure

death of light, the leaf's sure return to the root

is repeated in million, death of all man to share.

Whatever world I know shines ritual death,

wide under this moon they stand gathering fire,

fighting with flame, stand fighting in their graves.

All shining with life as the leaf, as the wing shines,

the stone deep in the moutain, the drop in the green wave.

Lit by their energies, secretly, all things shine.

Nothing can black that glow of life; althought

each part go crumbling down

itself shall rise up whole.

Now I say there are new meanings; now I name

death our black honor and feast of possibility

to celebrate casting of life on life. This earth-long day

between blood and resurrection where we wait

remembering sun, seed, fire; remembering

that fierce Judaean Innocent who risked

every immortal meaning on one life.

Given to our year as sun and spirit are,

as seed we are blessed only in needing freedom.

Now I say that the peace the spirit needs is peace,

not lack of war, but fierce continual flame.

For all men: effort is freedom, effort's peace,

it fights. And along these truths the soul goes nome,

flies in its blazing to a place

more safe and round than Paradise.

Night of the soul, our dreams in the arms of dreams

dissolving into eyes that look upon us.

Dreams the sources of action, the meeting and the end,

a resting-place among the flight of things.

And love which contains all human spirit, all wish,

the eyes and hands, sex, mouth, hair, the whole woman --

fierce peace I say at last, and the sense of the world.

In the time of conviction of mortality

whatever survive, I remember what I am. --

The nets of this night are on fire with sun and moon

pouring both lights into the open tomb.

Whatever arise, it comes in the shape of peace,

fierce peace which is love, in which move all the stars,

and the breathing of universes, filling, falling away,

and death on earth cast into the human dream.

What fire survive forever

myself is for my time.

South Korean's fight to Freedom since 1961: Park Chung Hee , Kim Dae-Jung, ...What I like to find out is if most koreans consider both men are equally good for their country.

Here's to share my sentiment:

爱国不如爱国语，
爱国语不如爱国人。
爱国人不如爱女人。
爱女人不如疼儿子。
疼儿子不如宠孙子。
宠孙子不如装孙子。
装孙子不如写Ah Q.
写Ah Q不如周作人。
周作人不是不爱国。
而是比大哥鲁小子
还要懂日本语
也喜好文言文。