Monday 24 June 2013

Fiftieth sonnet of Dèr Mouw translated into English


The shot’s report rolls on, a ball of sound,
from mountain wall to wall in loud careen:
the beast, wounded by what’s falsely unseen
edges to where a slant-lit cave is found;

with shattered bone and heavy limp, he lays
a narrow trail of red along the ground;
far from the forest where his food was found
he dies there in the darkness; and decays.

The real dead-shot with words can sometimes hit
the youth, setting out through the wilderness
of strong emotion, where hurt’s really bad:

and from this blow, and from the pain of it,
he flees to his soul’s deepest-hid recess,
and finds he can’t re-surface; and goes mad.

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