By John Heathe Stubbs

July 9, 1918 – December 26, 2006 (88 years)

Medium: Online Text

https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/en/Heath-Stubbs%2C_John-1918/To_the_Mermaid_at_Zennor

Summary: A moralistic rebuke and rejection, still uses striking imagery. Refers to the mermaid as nephilim, “half fish, half fallen angel.”

The website I got this from had versions in English and Hungarian. I don’t know why. But I wrote both of them down. The visual and sound aspects of poems are very important and I figured this would help me get familiar with the language. Anyways, the Hungarian version has some accent marks you don’t see in English. I added these for the handwritten transcript, however, for the typed version I left them out.

Transcript (English):

Half fish, half fallen angel, none of you

Human at all – cease your lust’s

Cold and insatiate crying from the tangled bay,

Nor, sea hag, here

Stretched webbed and skinny fingers for your prey.

This is a hideous and wicked country,

Sloping to hateful sunsets and the end of time,

Hollow with mineshafts, naked with granite, fanatic

With sorrow. Abortions of the past

Hop through these bogs; black-faced the villagers

Remember burnings by the hewn stones.

Only the saints,

Drifting on oak-leaves over the Irish Sea,

To sing like pitpits from their crannied cells

With a thin stream of praise, who hear the Jennifer

Sob for her sins in a purgatory of foam-

Only these holy men

Can send you slithering from the chancel steps,

And wriggling back to your sunken paradise

Among the hollow-eyed and the capsized.

Transcript (Hungarian):

Felig hal, felig bukkot angyal, egy porcikad

Sem emberi-hagy; fel a vagy-

Hideg s moho jajaval a hinaros obolbol;

Tengeri voszorkany, ne is

Kapkoj zsakmany utan borhartyas ujjaiddal.

Iszonyu es gonosz videkez

Lejit szornyu naplementek s a lebuko ido

Fele, tarna-lukkakal, granitesupazon, butol

Megszallotan. A mult korcsai ugrandoznak

A zsembekok kozott; a kofejtesnel

Sotet areu parasztok tuzekre emlekeznek.

Cuzapan a szentek

Kiktolgyleven rignak az Ir-tengeren

Vekonykan zsolozsmazva mint madarkak rovatkas

Odvaikbol; akik halljak, a Jennifer

Siratja vuneit tajtek-tisztitutuzben

Csake szent ferfiak

Siklathatnak le teged a karzat lepcsein

S kigyoztathnak le teged a karzat lepcsein

S kigyoztathatnak vissuza elsuilyedt edenedbe

Az ureges-szemuek s felborultak koze,