A Tri-Lingual Tribute to the poet John Ashbery


We once asked John Ashbery, who has been a great supporter of The Bow-Wow Shop, why the Germans in particular loved his poetry so much, and he replied 'They never said'. This evening, wholly in the spirit of that response, and by way of a tribute to John Ashbery, who is currently striding manfully through his eighty-third year, and writing as playfully and as prolifically as ever, we are going to present a short poem of his entitled 'This Room' in a variety of tongues.


Here is the poem in English:

 

This Room

 

The room I entered was a dream of this room.

Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.

The oval portrait

of a dog was me at an early age.

Something shimmers, something is hushed up.

 

We had macaroni for lunch every day

except Sunday, when a small quail was induced

to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?

You are not even here.

 

The poem will now be read in Russian and Polish translation, simultaneously, by Desdemona O'Rahilly and Ana Gumowska. Desdemona is the often quite difficult daughter of our not so esteemed columnist from Co. Wexford, Kevin O'Rahilly. Ana Gumowska hails from the beating heart of Old Warsaw, which was recently re-constituted.

You may remember that Dessy - as we so often fondly call her - was recently invited by no less prominent an organ than the Poetry Review to be its very first young female Irish poetry reviewer from Co. Wexford. A new quota system is in place, we understand.