Poet's Choice

but raise sons and daughters

with a true heart until you grow old.

Across the gulf between two languages and their cultures, as well as the gulf of many decades, the poem in translation has an engaging, good-humored fatalism. The severe limitations to what can be known or understood seem to be tempered by a modest reliance on the ancient, fundamental ways.

Whose poetry in the English language might serve as a rough comparison for that melding of folk elements and formal sophistication, brooding fatalism and urbane consciousness? Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) comes to mind. Here is his poem of 1915, "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations' ":

I

Only a man harrowing clods

In a slow silent walk

With an old horse that stumbles and nods

Half asleep as they stalk.