Auden Nash
Thiar
An chúinne seo den bhaile fearainn
Mar nach bhfuil na páirceanna néata, dronuilleogach
Le clathacha comhthreomhara,
Ach iad beag neamhrialta, breac le boirneoga,
Ar nós chnuas de chealla ailse i bhfíochán sláintiúil,
Nó a mhalairt iomlán de scéal.
In airde, teaspánann rian fiarlán an bhóithrín ghlais
Sall is anall ar scáileán an chnoic
Go bhfuil cuisle inti, croí ag bualadh fós,
Nó tá dul amú orm.
Ní chorraíonn bád ná coit sa chuan thíos,
Bíodh ráthaíocht nó – is minice – faic.
Ní hé an t-uisce amháin áta ina léinseach,
Nó tá léinseach ’na luí ar na’ haon ghné den mhír.
B’fhéidir go bhféadfaí an rún seo a fhuascailt,
An ortha a bhriseadh,
dá mbeadh na focail cuí ann
Agus fios ar ord cheart na n-uimhir,
Cosúil leis na méarchláir chróime
Ar chuaillí gheataí na tithe folamha,
Ach tá tost toll laistigh
agus tost amugh.
–Simon Ó Faoláin
Back West
In this corner of the townland
Where the fields are not neat and rectangular
With parallel fences
The fields are a bit irregular, dotted with rocks
Like a cluster of cancer cells in healthy tissue
Or, perhaps, I am mistaken.
Up above, the hill, as if a screen, displays
The zigzag course of the green lane
There is a pulse in it, as if a heart beats still
Or my thoughts have gone astray.
Neither boat nor coot moves in the harbor down below
Whether there is shoaling – or most often – nothing at all
The water is not alone in its smoothness
Or, perhaps, only it is smooth.
Maybe it would be possible for this secret to resolve itself
For the spell to break
If we had adequate words
And knowledge of the order of numbers
Like those on the chrome keyboards
On the posts of the gates of the empty houses
But inside those houses, there is hollow silence
And, outside, silence too.
–Translated from Irish by Auden Nash
West
This corner of the townland
Where the fields are not neat, rectangular
With parallel fences
The fields are a bit irregular, dotted with rocks
Like a cluster of cancer cells in healthy tissue
Or, the antithesis is true,
Up above, the zigzag course of the green lane
Is displayed, back and forth on the screen that is the hill
That there is a pulse in it, a heart still beats
Or I have gone astray.
Neither boat nor coot moves in the harbor down below
Whether there is shoaling – or most often – nothing at all
The water is not alone in its plane
Or the plane only contains water.
Maybe it would be possible for this secret to resolve itself
For the spell to break
If there were adequate words
And knowledge of the correct order of the numbers
Like on the chrome keyboards
On the posts of the gates of the empty houses.
But there is hollow silence inside
And silence outside too.
–Translated from Irish by Auden Nash
A Little Noticeable
(An erasure of my interview with Judith Nash)
No.
N/A.
Her paternal
great-grandparents probably spoke some Gaelic, but she’s not precisely sure
side was partly Irish, partly English
Her mother’s family was entirely Greek
My grandfather’s
father was purely English
mother’s mother was Irish-Canadian, and presumably her father as well,
they had been in Canada for quite a while.
Due to its status as an ex-Commonwealth country
Canadian English is slightly more formal and precise than American English
Canadian English was not viewed as a status symbol;
English varied person to person.
English is a difficult language to learn
It was often desired to speak good English.
There were no mandates, but there was some subtle discrimination
Kids would often be made fun of for the way they talked.
Kids would tell their parents to not speak their heritage languages in public
Slurs were sometimes used
There was little resistance
It was hard to fight back
Unless one belonged to a clique that had their back
Kids that spoke other languages internalize that their languages were inferior
Anglophone ancestors spoke the dominant language
Resulted in linguistic oppression of minority languages
English was passed down as the dominant language
Kids were encouraged to speak English at home
There was a generational disconnect from Europe
She has good memories of her grandmother speak Greek
She was influenced not by their language but their lifestyle and culture
Translator’s Statement
Simon Ó Faoláin was born in Dublin in 1973 and was raised in West Kerry, located in the far west of Ireland. Originally an archaeologist, he has become a prominent Irish poet in recent years. In the last half-century, many poets from the Dingle peninsula (the westernmost area in Ireland) have garnered acclaim, especially due to their writing that mixes modernity and heritage. Ó Faoláin’s poetry is described by Ó Dúill as both “intellectual” and “honest,” possibly in homage to his old and dying language, his training as an archaeologist (Ó Dúill), and his fatherhood. His poems are rather metacognitive, discussing what we think we know is true (“Simon Ó Faoláin”), as well as alternative – often marginalized – viewpoints. In his poems, a variety of settings are considered, all of which are described very vividly (Nic Eoin).
The poem’s Irish title, “Thiar,” literally meaning “West,” refers to the far western part of the country in which Ó Faoláin was raised. The Dingle Peninsula has been home to several prominent Irish poets within the last sixty years, including Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, and Seán Ó Ríordáin (Ó Dúill). While the first part of the poem evokes the beautiful, rustic, almost indescribable nature of Ó Faoláin’s hometown – flat, slightly rolling grassland that drops into steep cliffs (meaning that the poem could be classified as an idyll) – the final part makes an obscure reference to “chrome keyboards/On the posts of the gates of the empty houses.” Considering that the poem was published in 2011, it is highly likely that this is a reference to the vacancy of large, expensive houses (hence those with “keyboards” on “gates”) purchased as second homes by affluent people in cities due to the 2008 recession, which especially hurt Ireland’s economy.
The poem’s arrangement appears to be “standard:” It is left justified, and line breaks occur at natural pauses where a comma would or could be appropriate. The poem is certainly not written colloquially, but it is not particularly formal either; its writing is elegant, but not superfluous, as it focuses on vivid imagery and also the nature of our comprehension of that imagery. There are no evident rhymes, but I suspect there to be some deliberate alliteration, as words that start with the same letter are often next to each other (“breac le boirneoga … chnuas de chealla” and “agus tost amugh”, for example). Each stanza does not have a fixed length, but the first three describe scenery in all but their final lines, which essentially say “or this description is completely wrong.”
My meeting with my translator was very helpful in creating a literal translation of the poem (annotated to show the meaning of each word), and she was able to explain several of the allusions and nuances (like the chrome keyboards and the 2008 recession). However, due to my translator’s schedule, my interview with her occurred before the class-designated period for translator interviews, so several interview resources were not available, which meant that I had to attempt to fill in steps that my translator and I did not complete together.
My first translation focused on trying to preserve the highly descriptive and metacognitive writing of the original poem. Many of the phrases followed immediately (or with very slight modifications for flow) from the literal translation. However, the reflective “or is this wrong?” lines at the end of the first three stanzas posed more of a challenge, as they had to remain eloquent while being accurate and varying each stanza to evoke the imagery of the original poem. The description of the boats in the harbor posed a minor roadblock, as there were no good English words to describe the types of boats referenced in the original Irish poem (“boat” and “coot” were the closest). The penultimate and final lines of that stanza were hard to describe based on the literal translation. I knew that those two lines were essentially grappling with the coplanarity of the water and the land, but I re-checked the meaning of some of the words in the lines, and determined that “smooth” was the best adjective for comparison between land and water.
My second translation focused on trying to preserve the word choice – especially the adjectives – of the original poem, as it was highly precise, and that was what made it a successful reflection on the dual nature of the landscape of the poet’s hometown. To create this translation, I started with the text of my first translation, substituted several words from the literal translation, and changed the lines to work around those words (“antithesis” at the end of the first stanza, and “plane” at the end of the third, for example). In the second stanza, I changed the ordering of the lines of the first two lines of the second stanza to keep the word “screen” in the second line.
I think that, when reflecting upon a poem, the relevance of its quality is often overemphasized ;the implications of the poem (often social or political) as a result of the author’s intentions serve as a more important facet for analysis. Therefore, when translating, my principal intent was to transfer the author’s intentions, but secondarily, I wished to insert my own, especially since they were similar to Ó Faoláin’s. Even though Boston is the urban bastion of eastern America, and the Kerry peninsula the rustic extremity of Europe, they are both frontiers of their respective continent, with seemingly dual natures (describable with contradictions) and gentrification (which I will touch upon more in the next paragraph). I also felt a connection to the 2008 recession, as the house in which I live was purchased by my mother only months before interest rates skyrocketed. If she had bought the house much later, I would likely not be able to today, or at least be living a very different life.
In the past year or so, I have begun to think more about my Irish heritage. My father’s side of the family is almost entirely Irish, but I rarely communicate with them. However, my Irish ancestors have been living in or near Boston for almost two centuries, and yet, due to the size of their families and my descent from lastborns, only four generations separate me from pre-Potato Famine Ireland. I have nearly no connection to the Irish language, but my Irish-speaking ancestors likely walked the same streets that I do. I suspect that their language was erased due to assimilation attempts, both in Britain and in America. As stated by Edmund Spencer in A View of the Present State of Ireland 1556, in reference to the English Conquest of Ireland, "[i]t hath ever been the use of the conquerer to despise the language of the conquered, and to force him by all means to learn his” (qtd. in Thing’o 4). I chose to translate “Thiar” because of its imagery of the poet’s hometown. I think that Boston, especially the area in which I live, has a similar dual nature: for example, my neighborhood consists of homogenous strung-together brownstones, yet their height varies by street, and most streets do not extend more than several blocks. It is also a very old city (by North American standards, at least), especially in my neighborhood, yet it is heavily populated by young affluent people. By translating Thiar, I was able to connect my Irish heritage to my fondness for my hometown, especially by emphasizing the description and word choice of the poet (which is important, considering that Irish voices have historically been marginalized). I suppose that my translation does have a rather political connotation, inherent through its reference to demographic shifts. I think that Madhu Kazu puts the necessarily political nature of cultural reflections quite nicely: “Whereas in most parts of the world— particularly in post-colonial contexts—translation is recognized as inherently political, discussions of literary translation in the U.S. emphasize formal concerns with a light attention to cultural variance.”
I had low expectations going into the interview for several reasons. One was fatigue: it was the night before the interview assignment was due, and I had made last-minute plans with my grandmother (my interview subject). The second was my “New World” roots: all of my Canadian ancestors had emigrated when assimilation was expected and necessary, causing my maternal grandparents to be, in the view of the dominant groups of society, “normal Canadians.” They both grew up middle class outside of Toronto and were at least part WASP, so I assumed that my grandmother would not have much to say about her linguistic heritage.
However, the interview, as recommended by the assignment, ended up taking a full 30 minutes, as my grandmother had more to say than expected about her Greek relatives and Canadian English. Her maternal grandparents were Greek immigrants, so spending time with her mother’s side of the family necessarily meant that she was interacting with Greek culture. My grandmother also noted the influence of Canada’s commonwealth links on its language. Canadian English, historically, has been more formal than American English, likely due to commonwealth pretension; however, she noted that the majority of linguistic diversity in English was between speakers, and that differences between the countries were averages.
That my grandmother was more connected to her Greek heritage than expected stuck with me. While she might not be linguistically connected to them, she certainly has a cultural connection, as one half of her family is either Greek-born or raised by Greek immigrants. I believe it is important to remember that while I (or anyone) do not have a linguistic connection to the “Old World”, cultural connections (even non-anglophone ones) remain. Just as Canada continues to feel attached to the Commonwealth, the presence of other cultures is enough for their influence to be notable.
I wanted to capture what my grandmother had said, as I think that, while partially what I expected – that her linguistic connections were not strong due to partial WASP heritage and strong WASP cultural influences – that other influences linger, and that there was harassment of immigrants, even European ones. I also wanted to note that there were multiple influences on my grandmother. Her mother’s side of the family consisted of Greek immigrants, whereas her father was English, and while not upper-class, indirectly aided the linguistic and cultural suppression of her mother’s Greek roots.
My notes from the interview were written quite informally, so producing the erasure poem was difficult, and there still remain some grammatical issues. This hindered my ability to produce a deeper poem; however, overall, her and my statements are clear, and the “arc” of the poem is effective.
Works Cited
“Simon Ó Faoláin.” Irish Wikipedia. https://ga.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%C3%93_Faol%C3%A1in. Accessed 1 June 2025.
Kaza, Madhu. "Editor’s Note: Kitchen Table Translation." Aster(ix) Journal. 9 Aug 2017. https://asterixjournal.com/note-translation/.
Ó Dúill, Gréagóir. “Simon Ó Faoláin.” Poetry International. https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-22528_O-Faolain. Accessed 1 June 2025.
Nic Eoin, Máirín. “Simon Ó Faoláin.” Versopolis. https://www.versopolis.com/poet/361/simon-o-faolain. Accessed 1 June 2025.
Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas. The New Press, New York, 2025.