The poem is one that my wife and I are found of. When we are at the cabin, we love to sit on the porch, watch the midnight sun, and listen to birds calling. It’s by a well regarded Norwegian poet Hans Børli, “Junikveld”. I’m trying to get chatGPT to make it more sensible in english - which it managed, but the prose is kind of simple. Well, here goes:
Certainly! Here is an English translation of the poem that maintains the depictions of nature and animals in a way that makes sense for English speakers:
We sit in the dusky June evening,
cooling ourselves on the porch.
And everything we see has double life,
because we sense it together.
Look – the forest lake gleams red
with sunken kingdoms of sunset.
And clear as an ancient silver thing
is the call of the loon.
And the cherry tree by the gate burns quietly
with freshly blossomed flowers.
Now they tremble white in a breath of wind,
– it’s as if something is urgent…
Oh, move closer to me
here on the kitchen porch!
The time we humans are together
is so fleetingly short.
Wow! Thank you for translating for us. It’s beautiful. I found the poem online (searched “Hans Børli, “Junikveld””) and though still impressive and profound… it pales in comparison to your translation. Again, thank you! I can see why you and your wife are so fond of it… it’s a beautiful picture!
Thanks for the kind words, but the translation is not mine, I merely asked chatGPT to translate it for us - “in a specific way”. Scary how well it works. The only obvious fluke is the cherry tree. There’s not much cherry in the arctic. We do actually have a cherry tree in our garden, but it doesn’t bloom until July/August.
But yeah, the poem is down-to-earth yet mystical and profound. With a simple lesson: come closer, and let us appreciate these fleeting moments…
Speaking of AI… I’ve recently gotten back to trying my hand at AI-generated 2.5D image effects… thanks to @Bulldog over on the Lightburn Forum. He’s always doing top-notch work over there but, as always, he generously shares his settings and answers questions about how he did it… so, slow as I am, I’m trying to follow his directions as best I can.
Using my “freebies” on the “openart.ai” website to generate some images that are far classier than what I had in mind (me and Mac, my dog… ) –
I used the prompt “Greyscale Bas Relief image, bald bearded old man wearing glasses, small pet dog with perky ears, high detail, high contrast” and it gave me this…
It decided to oddly dress both me and the dog – maybe I should have used “curmudgeon”" instead of “old man” in the prompt – but I liked it and decided to laser it onto a motley pecan endgrain “cookie”…
I’ll never reach @Bulldog’s level (I think he’s also using pretty fancy laser…) of course but I’m thinking it shows quite a great deal of promise so far. Besides, it looks neat and is fun to do… and it keeps me off the streets at night.
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