Christmas 2022

Merry Christmas from snowy Montreal!
 


May Santa get you all the presents your heart desires,

 

whether he finds you packed with others

 


or alone in the wilderness.


 
Here is how I spent Christmas Eve morning:
  1. - shoveled snow
  2. - while drinking coffee got kicked in the head by a vagrant Muse
  3. - composed a Christmas poem in Czech
  4. - translated it to English  (the Czech variant is better, but so be it...)

Here it is, starting with a verse from a famous mid-19th century Czech poet Erben, followed by my own thoughts:
 
Hoj, ty Štědrý večere,
ty tajemný svátku,
cože komu dobrého
neseš na památku?
Oh Christmas Eve, oh holiday -
so mysterious is your ring.
What memorable goods and things
for people will you bring?
Kotníkové ponožky
pro skutečného muže,
či kosmetický balíček -
to dárek jeho družce?
Ankle socks for
a real man,
cosmetics for
his girl/fan?

 
Vtipný dárek ostatním
jež humor v krvi mají -
třeba sadu čtyřlístků
co v sobě štěstí tají?
Funny gift to those people
with humor in their blood,
perhaps a set of clover leaves
which hide inside good luck?
Po dospěle  odvážné
erotickou hračku,
pro ty spíše vzorové
zkuste novou pračku.
For maturely adventurous
an erotic toy.
For a bit more demure folk
a washing machine joy.


Snaše dejte solničku,
jak vám všechno solí,
strýci balzám na klouby
co ho pořád bolí.
Daughter-in-law gets 'salt shaker:
she salts us with her jibes.
For the uncle 'ointment on his joints,
to stop his pains an cries.
Ten sud piva pro tátu,
ten chtěl vzdyčky mít.
Pár dní v lázních pro mámu,
že s ním musí žít.
A barrel of beer for your Dad
he always wished to get.
A spa vacation for your Mom,
when life with him is sad.
Deodorant pro syna -
třeba se nám zlepší...
košík mýdel pro dceru
ať se cítí hebčí.
A deodorant for your son -
and hope that help this might...
A soap basket for your daughter
she'll feel so clean and bright.

 

 

Cihlu zlata pro sebe ...
to se nám to žije!
Kusy uhlí sousedům
ať to s nimi šije.
A brick of gold for self, of course...
what a life that we lead!
Bricks of coal for thy neighbours
and let them eat the sh**.

Ale ne! To je jen žert...
Buďme ke všem štědří.
Svátky jsou o tolik lepší
když jsme k sobě dobří.
Well, NO! I'm only joking...
Let's generous be to all.
Holidays are so much better
when goodness' our call.

 

A co Erben, co ten na to?
Co řekne básník na to jen?
Třeba něco o kolovrátku:
Toč se a vrč, celý den.
Celý svět je na obrátku,
život lidský jako sen!
And that Erben - what about him?
What a poet has to to say?
A spinning wheel that only whirls
each and every day -
that's really your life spinning
in such a dreamy way!

Note: The first stanza is taken from the middle of Erben's ballad Christmas Eve from the collection Kytice (Kytice z pověstí národních / A Bouquet of Folk Legends) which is actually a bit dark, fatalistic,


about love and death (ouch...)

But I felt more cheerful, more jolly than that...
 
 
Let the Christmas Season reign!
 

 
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Gagarin, Software Engineering and Neutron Stars

Image
Today, April 12, is the   International Day of Human Space Flight ,   designated to be so by the UN, in 2011, to mark the 50th anniversary of the first human flight, by Soviet cosmonaut,   Yuri Gagarin.   Today it is exactly 60 years since that memorable flight.  It is also exactly 40 years since the very first   Space Shuttle   flight, on April 12, 1981. Russians know this day as   Cosmonautics Day ( День Космона́втики ) and still observe it as a big event. In the west, people with interest in space exploration sometimes hold a party called " Yuri's Night ". https://yurisnight.net/about/  Yuri Gagarin   was an extraordinary fellow.  His story is worth telling, so I will do that here. He grew up hungry and in abject poverty in a Russian village, Klushino , occupied by Germans, with his family enduring very rough treatment by the Germans. On the very first day, Germans burned down his school.  He learned to read from a discarde...
Read more

Happy New Year 2023!

Image
It is a new year, 2023. Happy New Year! It may be a wild ride, but let's hang in there! Note: I do know that we are already somewhat into the new year ... but I didn't find time (or willpower, perhaps) to put a new post together, so the timing is a bit weird ... In 2022, the scary Covid-19 pandemic became mostly an epidemic and is on its way to end up as an unpleasant endemic. The scary Russian imperialism became even scarier Russian imperialism, now mostly focused around the Black Sea but with more nuclear sabre rattling and genocidal flair. (I hope they lose.) The unreasonably low inflation and interest rates became an unreasonably high inflation (with interest rates somewhat catching up). As always, each year the dictionary people present their "word of t...
Read more

The Number is 42

Image
Today, April 2, 4/2, is a special day, because " 42 ", as some may know, is               the answer to life the universe and everything  This was pointed out in the   Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , which is a book very popular with the geeky computer crowd. In the book, its geeky, but cool author,  Douglas Adams , apparently chose 42 because, at the time the book was written,  n = 42  was the only number that defied the power of a supercomputer to: "find  x ,  y ,  z  such that  x ^3+ y ^3+ z ^3= n " (Note: there is more info and an erratum on the bottom of the blog regarding the actual origin of 42.) In the decades after that, with faster computers, after about a million hours of processing were spent on an open cloud of PCS's, the answer actually  was  found and is this:   42 = (-80538738812075974)^3 + 80435758145817515^3 + 12602123297335631^3 ...
Read more