First cuneiform results

Hittite is proving ultra-resistant. I hope I didn't promise more than I can keep.

However, to give my eclect audience a foretaste, here are the first fragments of the promised pastoral elegy translated from that very old and long extinct Indo-European language:

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? bemourn ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? mourn grief ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? lament cry? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ‘is flute ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? Hattupsilitas ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? fields of barley? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? onion ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? finest of minds of his? ?
? generation? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? moan grief cry? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? so cruelly blown away ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? moan grief cry? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? bemoan oh muses*? ?
? ? ? ? bemoan? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

* “Muses” is a later Greek concept. However, the divine beings appealed to here seem quite related as far as I can make out.

Note that this is far from final. The poetics and modes of thinking and expression in this ancient language were quite different from today's Indo-European or other modes.

Experience burnt into memory this morning

A
waft
of big
synthetic
coconut : Mister
Burnt Bronze exits tanning saloon
in yellow shorts and white tee in anemic April

– Len Blumfeld

Faithful poetic razor edge fib reporting as always.

Let's go and see if such things can be true

The Miracle Man

That doctor's amazing! They say the old sinner
Puts food in his mouth when he's eating his dinner,
And also feels hungry if starved of his bread,
And closes his eyes when he sleeps in his bed!
He walks with his feet always treading the ground,
His eyes can see things, and his ears can hear sound.
On his shoulders, they tell me, his head you can view:
O let's go and see if such things can be true!

– Sukumar Ray

(Translated from the Bengali by Sukanta Chaudhuri)

Note
Sukumar Ray (1887-1923) could be called the Indian Lewis Carroll. His nonsense verse is as known in Bengal as Mother Goose is in the English-speaking world. His son was the great film director Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), also a writer; the third generation in a family of multi-talents.

More on Sukumar Ray at At Home, Writing.

Playing St. Francis again

"What's all the twitter about?" I asked up into the air.

"Oh, Shruti tells me the nest is comfortable now.
Near finished.
Nothing better than a job well done."

"Right."

"Have a good day."

"Chirp on then."

Work in progress announcement

To all those holding their breath for additional pastoral elegies from the antique world:

I am currently working on the translation of a Hittite pastoral elegy about a shepherd (what else!) and archer against his will named Hattutaswili. The problem is that the cuneiform tablets it's on are in very poor shape, so that a lot of text is missing or blurred.

Their condition is nowhere near as good as the one shown above.

For consolation, I'm posting a quote from the Hittite Lullaby John Ashbery discovered:

More letters from the Sphinx
About what it was like [...]
All aspirations in the teeth
Of some pedantic ritual.

(from John Ashbery, As We Know, 1979)

The longings of a remote espresso bar

There’s
an
espres-
so bar on
the lonely planet’s
shoestring that needs more business now

– L. Blumfeld (copyright & you know what 2007)

Uninvited note
This came about as the result of an MSN search for "espresso bar at lonely planet" from somewhere in the Philippines executed on this blog. Whoever searched was probably disappointed in World So Wide. I suspect that they wanted someone like Douglas Adams, not Len Blumfeld.
Just in case, and to prevent any eventuality of more disappointment in the future, I simply had to add appropriate content.

In a trough

If this is all you have to complain about, you're doing great.
– Playdough, ca. 333 BC

I'm in a writing trough right now.

Might change any minute. Hopefully will.

Triggered by:

1. Too many calls from an ageing parent who has excelled in laying guilt trips on people for most of her 86 (soon to be 87) years.
2. Overload & exhaustion, including from having been exceedingly "creative".
3. Back pain.
4. General Unlust*.

Now would be a good time to write something Bukowskiesque. He always managed to milk the most blabla situations for something marketable.

*A wonderful German word for which there is no exact match in English. Perhaps "disinclination" would not be so bad.

Self-accounting

Perhaps it's not such a bad idea for a blogger to once in a while muze over whether blog objectives have been reached or where things are going. An unedited interview with Jackie Shannon from the Bloggo Times sheds light on these and other issues.

JS: With a pretentious title like "World So Wide" your blog definitely invites scrutiny.
LB: I didn't intend it to be pretentious. Just wide.
JS: What? Oh. Haha. ... Let's see. Yes: With a title like that, one would expect something comprehensive, something that covers lots of areas. One thing that seems to be missing is razor edge reporting on political events.
LB: Sorry. I live on the edge of town, and the razor cuts off the news before it gets to me.
JS: What? Oh. Haha. I see.
LB: Also, I must say that there are lots of people out there who do a terrific job of reporting. There's no need for another poor job from me. Take, for example, Quirky News from Ananova. Where they recently reported on a swan in China that is friends with fish and regularly feeds them.


JS: You read that column regularly for news?
LB: No. Discovered it just this morning in search of quirky news.
JS: Thank you for these kind words, Mr. uh ...
LB: Blumfeld. That's all right, sometimes I forget it myself. Thanks for stopping by, Jackie de Shannon.
JS: There's no "de" in there.
LB: Sorry! Confused you with somebody I used to listen to.
JS: Anyway: toodleloo.
LB: One last thing. I do cover a wide variety of topics that are both pertinent and relevant. Like pastoral elegy, going back to Old Greek times. If you want me to, I'll go back even further. Babylon, Atlantis, you name it – I'll deliver the pastoral elegies. I do fibonaccis, that's leading edge technology.
JS: That's all nice and well, but –
LB: I mix (up) classical Indian music with poetry I write, report on the weather sometimes. Perhaps not often enough. But in sharp edge fashion. I write about coffee, warm-ups, rumors, sighs, wind-downs, even quoting García Lorca and Robert Bly.
JS: Gotta go. Bye!
LB: I added a haiku in Hindi the other day, for God's sakes! That's India for you, an old and upcoming nation. It's a wide world out there, and I take my nibbles. By the way: I can report that the weather looks very promising today! Blue sky, cherry trees in bloom, lots of pollen in the air making me dread hay fever ...
JS: (sound of door slamming)

Fibbing Fats

Oh
Fats!
Come on
and let the
good times roll, forget
Blue Monday. Kansas City here

he
comes.
Hello
Josephine
meets whipporwill calls
in his blue heaven walking to

New
Or-
leans to
see red sails
in the sunset when
his dreamboat comes home. Ain’t it a

shame:
the
nimble
black fingers
no longer pound the
piano. The moon did stand still.

– Lenny Blumfeld (cprt. 2007)

Note*
Brought about by Tad Richard's Fats Domino fib in the comments of Gregory K.'s The Fib: "Perhaps you shouldn't try to write Fibonacci poems while listening to Fats Domino."
*Just can't leave the notes alone, can I?

A Hindi haiku

अमावस कि रात
मदिरा में चांद डूबा
पेई सुंग शिव जगेय

– Richa Dubey (copyright 2006)

Originally posted by the author in transliteration on her blog khwaab-i-fursat, where this haiku can also be read in her own English translation.

Open letter to the author

Dear Richa,

Your poems are wonderful. Unfortunately, your blog has been inactive since the end of last year, and there is no link with an e-mail address. Otherwise I would have asked for your kind permission to post this haiku in World So Wide.

Please get in touch if you stumble across this posting.

Kind regards,

Leonard Blumfeld