I adventskalendern gör vi ett nytt besök i lönnlövets land, Kanada. Yvonne Blomer är Poet Laureate i Victoria, British Columbia. Hennes verk har två gånger nominerats för the CBC Literary Awards och hon har medverkat i The Best Canadian Poetry (på engelska) samt i antologier och litterära tidskrifter i Kanada, Storbritannien och Japan.
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Poems of London : the capital in classical verse innehåller flera av de största brittiska författarna. Men framför allt har redaktören Hugh Morrison lyft fram delikatesserna ur Londons skönlitterära textflöde. Allt jag kan säga: Smaklig spis!
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Jag inleder med en text som verkligen känns genomarbetad. Den är inget ögonblicks verk. Dikten är författad av George Eliot, pseudonym för Mary Ann (Marian) Evans, född 22 november 1819, död 22 december 1880.
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| Sherlock Holmes museum |
In a London Drawingroom, by George Eliot
(From Poems of London: the Capital in Classic Verse. Montpelier Publishing, 2015.)
The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.
For view there are the houses opposite
Cutting the sky with one long line of wall
Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch
Monotony of surface and of form
Without a break to hang a guess upon.
No bird can make a shadow as it flies,
For all is shadow, as in ways o'erhung
By thickest canvass, where the golden rays
Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering
Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye
Or rest a little on the lap of life.
All hurry on and look upon the ground,
Or glance unmarking at the passers by
The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages
All closed, in multiplied identity.
The world seems one huge prison-house and court
Where men are punished at the slightest cost,
With lowest rate of colour, warmth and joy.
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Nästa exempel beskriver en sen natt (eller tidig morgon) i staden och är författad av Amy Lowell. Hennes texter återvänder jag så gärna till.
A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M, by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
(From Poems of London: the Capital in Classic Verse. Montpelier Publishing, 2015. Originally published in Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, 1914.)
They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
Like a slow-moving river,
Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,
One,
And then another.
Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere.
Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear and round,
Through the plum-coloured night.
She cannot light the city;
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.
I stand in the window and watch the moon.
She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.
I know the moon,
And this is an alien city.
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Sista ordet går till D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Den här dikten kräver att man håller tungan rätt i mun när texten deklameras.
Parliament Hill in the evening, by D.H. Lawrence
(From Poems of London: the Capital in Classic Verse. Montpelier Publishing, 2015.)
The houses fade in a melt of mist
Blotching the thick, soiled air
With reddish places that still resist
The Night's slow care.
The hopeless, wintry twilight fades,
The city corrodes out of sight
As the body corrodes when death invades
That citadel of delight.
Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread
Through the shroud of the town, as slow
Night-lights hither and thither shed
Their ghastly glow.
Londondikter gillas verkligen!
SvaraRadera