Hotlinking the Vegetable

Here's another crushed up hotlink, this time hailing from Harry and the poetry, and uses this picture to illustrate a poem by Rainer Rilke Maria. I ran the page through Babelfish to see what exactly I have the honor of illustrating. This is a translation from German to Italian, and then to English. The first probably done by someone with an ear for both languages and an affinity for the poet. The second one is a machine translation:


Autumn - Rainer Rilke Maria

the leaves fall from far away, nearly
garden remote grazed in skies;
with a gesture that it denies the leaves fall.

and every heavy night the earth
it falls from the stars in the solitudine.

all we fall falls this hand,
and therefore every other hand that you see.

but all these things that fall, Someone
with infinite dolcezza it holds to them for hand.


Here's an English version:

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.


There's merit in the both. I like most of the machine translation - it makes me study the meanings of the words more closely, and thus I find a variety of meanings.

The picture is rather severely crushed, but illustrating a cool poem that set me pondering awhile is ample compensation.

Thank you, Harry!


UPDATE 13 June 2006: This picture was originally hotlinked from rT World. This page is some kind of Chinese, and true to form for East Asian hotlinks, on a very long page full of photos. My maple's leaves are right up front, though, that's kind of nice.

Thanks rT World!