Gerard Manly Hopkins was on the English syllabus for my final year of high school way back in 1979. This was one of the poems I studied. I wonder now what sense I could have made of it then; how, protected from any of life’s arrows, I could have grasped anything of the anguish and triumph in these words. There is an awful reading of the original here, and a much more honest one here.
Anyway, I decided to re-write it to bring the English up to date.
| G.M.Hopkins | M.C.Clarke |
|---|---|
| NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; | To give in to despair is an empty comfort, like feasting on a rotting corpse. I will not accept that option. |
| Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. | Even though I am hanging on to whatever it means to be human by no more than an unravelling thread, I WILL NOT let go. I will not say “I can’t go on”. I can go on.I can at least take one more step forward. I can last the night and hope for a better day ahead. I will not give up. |
| But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee? | But what the fuck’s going on here? What sadist is playing this game with me? What’s the point of kicking the world out of orbit and sending lions to attack me? Why stare at my brokenness as though feeding on it, why mock me lying here like a pile of shit when all I want to do is run away and hide? |
| Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer. | [The next day?] Ok, so I can see that suffering builds character. I’ve come to accept that principle and although it has been hard going, I have nevertheless been given strength and joy and even laughter. |
| Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? | But who should I cheer now that I’ve come out the other side of such suffering? Do I praise the one in heaven who mistreated me? Or do I give myself a cheer for persevering through such mistreatment? Maybe it’s a bit of each. |
| That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God. | I survived a godforsaken night that seemed like a year, fighting an unknown assailant for no apparent … Oh shit! That was God! |