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Timothy Adès is a rhyming translator-poet who has translated poetry from French, German, and Spanish into poems that follow the forms of the originals. His publications include versions of Victor Hugo, Jean Cassou, Alberto Arvelo Torrealba, Robert Desnos, Alfonso Reyes, and Ricarda Huch. He has made frequent appearances in The High Window and his bilingual selections of poems by Christian Morgenstern and Joachim Ringelnatz were both published by the High Window Press.
In Loving by Will he has translated all 154 sonnets of the Bard’s love-life into lipograms, not using letter E. All the original sonnets are included in parallel with Timothy Adès’ ingenious translations, making this an excellent study guide to William Shakespeare’s sonnets as well as an entertraining collection in itself.
Stephen Fry has commented: “I simply do not know if I can find words to applaud your work as much as I should… Genius.”
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N.B. A copy of Loving by Will by Tim Adès can be obtained by following the link to Shearsman Books
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Timothy Adès: Four Poems from Loving by Will
(Photo from Creazilla.com)
1 WITH YOUR GOD LOOKS, WHAT ABOUT A CHILD?
Good-looking folk and animals should pup,
immortalising rosy-blooming glory.
Maturing, I’ll pass on, I’ll go paunch-up,
and my young sprog will carry on my story.
But you contract your troth with inward look,
nourish your glow with autophagic food,
drying to scarcity your bounty’s brook,
your own worst hitman, doing harm, not good.
What! You, this world’s outstanding work of art,
you, proclamation of a coming Spring,
bury in your own bud your major part,
wasting good stuff by too tight husbanding!
For our world’s good, nor tomb nor gluttony
should quaff this birthright of humanity.
Autophagic: consuming his own body.
*
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
***
18 COMPARING YOU WITH A DAY
PROBABLY IN JULY OR AUGUST
I’ll put you up against a balmy day…
You win on looks. Not cold, and not too warm.
Winds cut up rough with darling buds of May;
a two-month contract can’t supply much balm.
Dog-days in August turn to burning hot,
or may contrarily grow all too dim;
and all fair fowls fall foul of you-know-what,
thrown by bad luck, or sunspots, out of trim.
But your hot days will last and last and last,
maintaining tiptop form with full control;
nor shall morticians brag of shadows cast
across your path. My words shall grow your soul.
Mankind may gasp and gawp, unstoppably:
I sign this gift, your immortality.
*
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
***
29 I’M OUT OF LUCK … UNTIL I THINK OF YOU
I’m out of luck and out of favour too.
I mourn my solitary, sad condition,
annoying God with vapid boo hoo hoo,
angry about my pitiful position.
If only I could match a lucky man,
a man who has good looks and lots of pals,
a man of parts and skills, a man who can!
I spurn my normal joys and rituals.
I know it’s all disgusting; but what’s this?
I think of you, and my condition soars,
day dawns, I quit dull ground, and fly to bliss,
a skylark, trilling hymns at bliss’s doors.
Thoughts of your warmth! I’m rich, I’m flourishing,
I wouldn’t swap my station with a king.
*
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
***
91 I GLORY IN YOUR LOVE, THAT’S WHAT I’M PROUD OF
Glory in birth, lad, glory too in skill,
glory in gilts and cash, in limbs of oak,
glory in clothing, fancy fashion’s frill,
glory in prancing stallion, hound and hawk;
and any whimsy has its joy adjoint,
a joy that hits a vying rival hard.
But such particulars I do not want:
outdoing all, I play my winning card.
Your loving in my book outranks high birth,
outgilding gilts, outshouting clothing’s cost,
outhounding hounds, outrunning stallions’ worth;
and having you, how proudly do I boast!
Only in this most sorry, that you may
withdraw it all, on my most sorry day.
*
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their bodies’ force,
Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost,
Of more delight than hawks or horses be;
And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away and me most wretched make.
The High Window 