Dickens of a Blog

in the foggy maw of spring
fall breath rises up all clove smoke
like kraai kraait
like yesterday met its gray road gray sky gray
stems gray

over broken fields await be low awash all calico
winds and creeping feline shouting
the scent of dying grass and living soil
while wisteria, stuk voor stuk,
is parsed purple upon the ground

and roses strive new branches new
thorns and out there, somewhere
a child by laughing unseen calls up
the grammar of bicycles
and saturdays

Background and Writing

It’s a quick poem that came to me more or less all at once so unlike nearly every other poem I have contemplated since restarting my blog, I was able to get it down without any significant loss between thought and pen.

It is a quite literal poem of this morning. It was gray and foggy and felt extremely autumnal with fields cut low and crows cawing and a general late-year grayness about BUT there are also children riding bicycles and shouting and purple wisteria blooms.

There was an experimental aspect to it, though, which I want to document.

First, Fast Draft

The creation was a bit unique and not necessarily something I will use often but I wrote the poem, initially, like this:

in the foggy maw of spring
autumnal breath rises up like clove smoke
like crow caw
like yesterday gray road gray sky gray
voices

over shorn fields waiting all calico
and cat like
in the smell of grass shout

while wisteria, one by one, purples
down into the ground

and roses rise up to the occassion
of new branches
and thorns and

somewhere a kid shouts bicycles
and saturdays

Line by Line Machine Translation

Then, I fed line by line into Google Translate, including all the broken lines and misspelled words, and asked it to translate them into Dutch, and got this:

in de mistige muil van de lente
De herfstgeur stijgt op als kruidnagelrook
zoals kraai kraait
zoals gisteren, grijze weg, grijze lucht, grijs
stemmen

over geschoren velden wachtend allemaal lapjeskatoen
en katachtig
in de geur van gras schreeuwen
terwijl de blauweregen¹, stuk voor stuk, paars kleurt
de grond in

en rozen komen tot hun recht in de gelegenheid
nieuwe vestigingen
en doornen en
Ergens roept een kind: fietsen!
en zaterdagen

Putting Back to English

Then I had Google Translate translate the whole thing back into English, and got this:

in the misty maw of lente
The autumn scent rises like clove smoke
like a crow crows
like yesterday, grey road, grey sky, grey
voices

over mown fields waiting all patchwork cotton
and feline
screaming in the scent of grass
while the wisteria, piece by piece, turns purple
into the ground

and roses come into their own in the opportunity
new establishments
and thorns and
Somewhere a child calls: cycling!
and Saturdays

Finally, Dougifying It

Then I took all three versions and blended them together and edited them in various ways. In a couple of places, leaving the Dutch obvious such as “kraai kraait” and “stuk voor stuk.”

In others, though, I teased out Dutch >> English puns. Paars is Dutch for “purple” so the wisteria is “parsed purple” and “met” is likewise for “with” so “yesterday met its gray road” is technically “with its gray road”.

“Stemmen” = “voices” so that became gray stems instead of gray voices.

Then, I went through and added a second draft of “Doug-ness” to it. “Shouts bicycles” became “the memory of bicycles” to make it more obvious and then “the grammar of bicycles” to make it more Doug-like. A few other similar tweaks occurred.

It has been a LONG time since I have tried writing a poem to completion, so I’ll likely need a bit of practice but there you go.

1. It might be a false connection, but I love that the Dutch word for wisteria is “blauweregen” which, broken up into “blauwe” and “regen,” would mean “blue rain.” ↩︎