On
day 29 of NaPoWriMo, I posted the first 6 verses of this multilingual piece - here it is in its now-complete entirety - undoubtedly a few slightly skewed pronunciation-rhymes and scans in there, but I prefer to see those as poetic licence, marks of a handmade product if you will...
Cheerleaders of the world unite
Two, four, six eight,
Do our words depreciate?
Three, five, seven, nine,
Not if we perform on time,
Speak the minute, second, hour,
Verses blossom, passion-flowered,
Cold black bile or sticky-sweet,
Angsty trick or tasty treat.
Deux quatre six huit,
Does Baudelaire have Shakespeare beat?
Trois cinq sept neuf,
No chance ami, not on my turf,
The Bard’s just bought his ivory tower,
And skips stiff-ruffed ‘neath rush-lit bowers,
Soliloquys in Stratford’s streets,
Where airs and sonnets maidens meet.
Due quattro sei otto,
Pay the piper, that’s my motto,
Tre cinque sette nove,
Never mess with Kaiser Soze,
The Mafia have nowt on him,
Concrete-booted one-way swim,
Grist for King’s Pet Semetary,
Reanimated zombie - scary.
Zwei vier sechs acht,
Get your busking butt well-parked,
Drei fünf sieben neun,
Into the hat old pfennig coins,
Profits meagre, pickings slim,
Beholden to the punter‘s whim,
Though still enough to get mead-merry,
Ferment the hops, the grain, the berry.
Dau pedwar chwech wyth,
Stuff my face with bara brith,
Tri pump saith naw,
Off to eisteddfod, man of straw,
Poet-battles, kennings slam,
Metheglin drunk by the dram,
Flaunt your metaphor prowess,
Poetry, words‘ party-dress.
Tvö fjögurra sex átta,
Viking skalds and saga-chatter,
þrjú fimm sjö níu,
Sing ho and raise a longship crew,
Strike the oar upon the fjord,
Tie your bride‘s bright hand-fast cord,
Live your life by Havarmal,
Brief pre-Valhalla interval.
Două patru șase opt,
Troubadour starts, the gossip stops,
Trei cinci șapte nouă,
Roma, take pride in who you are,
Dance round the campfire, dance in the streets,
Dance with the next stranger that you meet,
Listen to the fiddle, hear its tune,
Music is a measure of life‘s fortune.
Kettő négy hat nyolc,
Kiss me Beltane, Samhain, Imbolc,
Három öt kilenc hét
Danube-summer’s beach-hot sweat,
See Saint Stephen on his mount,
Steppe-men’s ancient victory-shout,
Stow away your spurs, your bows,
Watch the river as it flows.
Dva chetyre shest' vosem'
Black-earth fertile chernozem,
Tri pyat' sem' devyat',
Abandonment of Pripyat,
Orthodoxy dome-tattooed,
The Great, The Terrible, the shrewd,
From Rurik to the oligarchs,
Red Square, Kremlin, Gorky Park.
Iki dört altı sekiz,
Drowsing ‘neath old olive trees,
Üç beş yedi dokuz,
Gemlik, colour of a bruise,
Çatal Hüyük, ancient town,
Neolithic city found,
Before Stonehenge or Newgrange maze,
Old when the walls of Troy were raised.
Dua empat enam delapan,
Chew on fiery-hot rendang,
Tiga lima tujuh sembilan,
Orang pendek, myst’ry forest man,
Bathe in Kerinci’s sulphured springs,
Yogyakarta’s house of kings,
Komodo dragons fiercely slither,
Rafflesia bloom vast then whither.
Dō cāra chaha āṭha
Off to the east by followed star,
Tīna pān̄ca sāta nau,
Give way unto the Holy Cow,
Tiny shrines, bright pigment-smeared,
Mela-masses feast and cheer,
From mangroved deltas’ humid steam,
To mountain-tops of cloud-decked dreams.
Mbili nne sita nane,
Githeri beans and hot ugali,
Tatu tano saba tisa,
Naivasha lake, an evening breeze,
Hike through dusty-hot Hell’s Gate,
Mara river in full spate,
Maasai-village welcome-feast,
Watched by baboon and hartebeest.
Twee vier zes acht,
Anne Frank House on Prinsengracht,
Drie vijf zeven negen,
Anarcho-syndicalist pagan,
Cycle ‘long the polder-dykes,
Amsterdam a field of bikes,
Sunflower, iris, cypressed land
Witness Vincent’s star-night hand.
[For those who list factual lists (I do), the languages are - English, French, Italian, German, Welsh, Icelandic, Romanian, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish, Indonesian, Hindi, Swahili, Dutch]
