Global widespread panic
The God had heard your say
The storm came on the way
The dance of clouds was manic
The forest became darker
Worms came out to the rain
And well before the pain
You heard the crack of thunder
«Farewell! Farewell!» You’d told her
«I shan’t see you any more»
She fainted on the floor,
No reason to live further
«Farewell!» She was your love
«Farewell!» She had been yours
The forest and the God
Had lost one of their doves
She is dead – her pain is yours now
Whenever there’ll be rain
You’ll hear her crying whisper
Which will drive you insane
English is good for writing poems. Its words are rarely over-long and you can afford to mold them to your own needs, it is just a pity it leaves much to be desired in the open-vowels department. For Romance languages, it is the other way round. I think Spanish and Italian are very similar in this respect.
RispondiEliminaA more articulated explanation follows. No need to say it is JLB, an anglophone JLB.
"In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words. For example, if you see slowly, quickly, in English, what you hear is the meaningful part of the word: slow-ly, quick-ly. You hear slow and quick. But in Spanish you say lentamente, rapidamente, and what you hear is the -mente. That is gratis, so to say. A friend of mine translated Shakespeare's sonnets into Spanish. I said that he needed two Spanish sonnets to a single English one, since English words are short and to the point, but Spanish words are over-long. And English also a physical quality to it. Well, in English, you can say: to explain away . In Kipling's Ballad of East and West, an English officer is pursuing an Afgan horse thief. They're both on horseback. And Kipling writes: "They have ridden the low moon out of the sky./ Their hooves drum up the dawn." Now you can't ride the low moon out of the sky in Spanish, and you can't drum up the dawn. It can't be done. Even such simple sentences as he fell down or he picked himself up, you can't do in Spanish. You have to say he got up the best he could or some lame paraphrase. But in English you can do much with verbs and positions. You can write: dream away your life; live up to; something you have to live down. Those things are impossible in Spanish. They cannot be done. Then you have compound words. For example you have wordsmith. It would be in Spanish un herrero de palabras, rather stilted, rather uncouth. But it can be done in German you can make up words all the time, but not in English. You are not allowed the freedom that the Anglo-Saxons had. For example, you have sigefolc, or victorious people. Now in Old English, you don't think of these words as being artificial, but in Spanish it can't be done. But of course, you have what I think is beautiful in Spanish: the sounds are very neat and clear. But in English you have lost your open vowels."