Best Translated Poems

Soliloquio del Individuo by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan


(Homage to Nicanor PARRA, 1914-2018, the Chilean ANTI-POET, winner of the "Cervantes Prize" (the highest literary honour for writers in Spanish), four times nominated for the Nobel Prize, studied Physics (Brown University), Cosmology (Oxford University) and...

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Giant poet gem, Tagore’s story-poem: NISKRITI,
Is a piazza perched paved and perfectly paced beauty;
Scale model of a castle of vast poetic kingdom,
That has spread into an empire of Indian wisdom!

Manjulika is a dew-drop in the mighty ocean,
Of the land of Bay of Bengal where feminine...

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Viva la Cordillera de los Andes by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan

       Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!

	I’m seized with a mad rage to yell
	long live the Andes Mountain Range
	may the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain

	The reason...

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Bharathidasan’s “Pulikku nay enta muulai” (To the Tiger, the Dog knows no safe dwelling!) translated by T. Wignesan 

Bharathidasan (1891-1964) was a self-proclaimed disciple of the eminent Brahmin poet: Cuppiramania Bharathiyar (cf. two poems of his already posted). Born in Pondicherry – a French enclave...

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			The Test by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan

	What’s an antipoet:
a trader in urns and coffins?
a priest who does not believe in anything?
a general who entertains doubts about himself?
a vagabond who laughs at every thing
   until old age overtakes him unto death?
an interlocuter...

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       Hay un dia feliz by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan

      To come by a happy day

(In this poem, Parra maintains lines of twelve to thirteen syllables with every other line ending almost...

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The Imaginary Man by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan

	The imaginary man
lived in an imaginary house
in the midst of imaginary trees
on the bank of an imaginary river

	From walls which are imaginary
hang ancient imaginary framed paintings
irreparable imaginary fissures
which recall imaginary events
which took place in imaginary worlds
in...

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Coplas on Wine

( here, the famous AntiPoetic Chilean Poet Nicanor Parra, b. 1914, uses the more popular form of the « copla » genre that he contains in quatrains of 8 to 10 syllables with two lines of each quatrain rhyming at random, though not...

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K373 and K374 of the THIRUKKURAL: Translated with Commentary

The poet's name, THIRUVALLUVAR [Thiru = Sacred and Valluvar = the name of the priesthood caste of the « Pariah » (whom Mahatma Gandhi prefered to call "Harijans", "the children of God"), is very probably a misnomer....

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                                    Madrigal

(Although the poem’s title takes on a well-known 16th...

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Haikus by René Etiemble, with commentaries,  Translated by T. Wignesan 

(Taken from Etiemble’s only collection of poems (out of thousands which he burned in a fit of rage against the university in 1983): le Coeur et la cendre: soixante ans de poésie (the heart...

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Love has no border.
A poem of love
for to embellish
a soul accomplished.
They are songs
that exist 
between two persons
who love each other.
A world done
with love and tenderness.
...

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Proyecto de tren instantaneo entre Santiago y Puerto Montt by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan

Soliloquio del Individuo by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T Wignesan 

(Homage to Nicanor PARRA, 1914-2018, the Chilean ANTI-POET, winner of the "Cervantes Prize" (the highest literary honour for writers in...

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Die Lorelei by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)- Translated by T. Wignesan
	For Regina von Degenfeld at Waibstadt
	-in respect and unending sufferance-

(Heine, a German Jewish lyrical and satiric poet, journalist and critic,
 settled in Paris from 1831 where he married Eugénie Mirat, an unsophisticated shop-assistant which earned him...

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« Porto-Vecchio », song by Julien Doré

(Note : If there’s a melody that can slither/sail past the ear-drums imperceptibly and settle permanently in the hypothalamus, this’s it. The sustained tempo in a low key and the husky but soothing and infinitesimally modulating whispered tones of...

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