Unfortunately, my Irish is horrible, so there's no way I can translate any of it to post, but I managed to find my favorite one . I love Thomas Kinsella's translation, but this one isn't bad if rather clinical.
It also has my favorite description of late adolescence:
When I was a child I was modest:.
I used not to be engaged on the evil business of lust;
since I reached the uncertainty of age
my wantonness has begun to beguile me.
1 comment:
Ah, but the poem is inaccurate or rather, partial in its understanding, so be gentle but honest with thyself, rather than overly harsh or completely rejecting of desire. We have enough psychological research that shows children are connective and sexual from the get go and that this connectivity is related to possessiveness, desire, and pleasure, including of self. (The shame is not that children are sexual but that we adults in this day and age exploit this in so many ways. ++Williams has written extensively on this.) It is hard to tell when lust bends our desire toward ourselves over all others for such enters the picture as acquistiveness/possessiveness (not sharing) quite early in children (Augustine would say from the beginning) and so where lust begins and refinement begins of our desire toward our finest End, is surely an ongoing work of God's Spirit and our rending of heart? As Martin Smith, formerly of the SSJE, writes in his libelli on confession, we shouldn't dismiss the sins of childhood, for then we have sins of our own--not sharing may be a first sign. Indeed, some of my worst offenses against others, especially my brother, were when I was a child.
A better translation of "Soul, Adorn Yourself with Gladness" in the final stanza is "Jesus be my purest pleasure". I can get with that!
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