Photo by Xavi Cabrera via Unsplash

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Today’s prompt asks us to “engage with different languages and cultures through the lens of proverbs and idiomatic phrases. Many different cultures have proverbs or phrases that have largely the same meaning, but are expressed in different ways. For example, in English we say “his bark is worse than his bite,” but the same idea in Spanish would be stated as “the lion isn’t as fierce as his painting.” Today, I’d like to challenge you to find an idiomatic phrase from a different language or culture, and use it as the jumping-off point for your poem. Here’s are a few lists to help get you started: One, two, three.” ~ NaPoWriMo, Day 22

Ah, my mother’s tongue, Romanian, is replete with proverbs and sayings. We have one (or several) for any life circumstance imaginable. I wish I could use them all in a poem. Perhaps I will–in a series of poems. But here are two that allowed me to go back in time, all the way to my eventful childhood. I used the proverbs in Romanian, with their equivalent English translations following the poem.

PS–Most of the poems written this April will remain online for up to five days, after which they will be replaced by an excerpt, an erasure, or a thoroughly amateurish art piece that will only allow for bits of the original poem to peek through. At least, this is the plan. The reason being that, at some point, in the hopefully not too distant future, these drafts will undergo revision and begin their multiple-year pilgrimage through the slush piles of many a literary journal. So help me, O Muse.

PPS–After the customary five days, the original poem has been replaced by an erasure. The seashell angels have had to move mountains–and even the moon–to stage it.

 

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Poetry from the trenches, Day 22

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