The Bird of Darkness

Breathe from the moon, my friend the swan,
And stretch thee till the night.
See how the windows, shades tightly drawn,
Accentuate our fright.
Thy honk might awake or anger the fay,
But worry not thy head;
The walls of eld hold tight thy prey,
Who slumber as though dead.

so take to wing
lift thy beak and sing
let the valleys ring
with all you bring

Cross the night, thou alabaster fowl,
And send to us a breeze
To wash our slaty rooftops, while cats prowl
Beneath the wine-dark seas.
Snag a fish that leaps above the waves,
But lettest never lose
The sight of what a broken beggar craves:
A blanket and some shoes.

so take to wing
lift thy voice and sing
let the mountains ring
with all you bring

Nak mid alle tunge fen dem veld,
Und okos nu subet.
Di vorde fen di hen tabun behelde,
Dei kri mid alle yet.
so take to wing
lift thy voice and sing
Da ga uta di mid ander breke tri,
Boot da de shira be
nit di

Then reste thy wearie head, and falle to erthe,
And close in slepe thyne eyes.
Close thy beake, reste thy song, untill the byrth
Of glowynge sunnes rise.
They who hearde thee well, atop the skye
Where fyre makes hys marke,
Perchance shall dance anewe, and soone may flye
To joine thee in the darke.

Lil Mugi

Facebook Blues II

Last night finally I agreed to make a
Facebook, answering all requests I'd gotten.
Certainly it is nice--connecting me to
People, getting a bunch of e-mail every
Time a person should change a little something--
But although I concede it has its merits,
Already it's an academic roadblock.
Now it's 6:27--all my binders
Lie unopened within my sealèd backpack.
With all heart that may lie within my ribcage,
I shall start on it once this poem is finished.
But already I've guessed that once it's over,
A cause, pettier still than what assailed me
Before, roaring shall come and take me captive,
Squeezing all of the juice within my brainbox
Into places where all I know to do are
Write on walls, or perhaps I'd count my friends' list.
But I shouldn't complain the way I'm doing--
This hendecasyllabic headache halts my
Work as well as does Facebook and its cousins.
But through writing this poem, my friends, I've learnt that
I should never again attempt this meter
In English; you'll agree the sound is awkward,
And the force that it carries when in Latin
Wholly dies when you move it o'er to English.
But I tried! Let you know, Catullus, that you
Have a friend who would gladly play in numbers.

Lil Mugi

Poetica Latina

Catullus faber et poeta maior,
sed illi numeri ioci videntur.
Certe talia pulchra multo amo, nam
versus tanti hominis mihi Latina
e lingua melior poeta non est.
Verum qui bene nec loqui potest, nec
Latine hendecasyllabos potest ut
magni scribere, verbum identidem omne
per densos equidem libros petendum est.
Ergo, si celeber poeta sis, nunc
cave! cum melior poeta fio,
cum versus numerique simplices sunt
mihi, quod ego tum creavi in amplis
cartis quin tibi opus perenne mittam.

Lil Mugi