2020.7.16山内久明 ♣COVID-19 Pandemic: Extempore Effusion in Acrostic Couplet
✏ 詩＝山内久明
Pandemic it is, I’m telling no lie,
All around the world folks are doomed to die;
None but the brave dare come and see this hell,
Death has undone how many I can’t tell;
Each wearing a mask, washing hands, gargling,
Men and women with CORONA fighting;
Isolate, stay home and avoid three Cs,
Confinement, Crowd and Closeness: damn disease!
© Hisaaki Yamanouchi 2020
〔Notes〕
This verse was privately composed while the coronavirus COVID-19 was raging in Wuhan and northern Italy. The subtitle is modelled on William Wordsworth’s “Extempore Effusion, Upon Reading, in the Newcastle Journal, the Notice of the Death of the Poet, James Hogg” (composed c. 30 November 1835).
Line 3: ‘None but the brave’ has an echo of John Dryden’s ‘None but the brave deserve the fair’.
Line 4: ‘Death has undone how many’ is indebted to T. S. Eliot’s ‘Death has undone so many’ in The Waste Land.
❐ PROFILE
1934年、広島県生まれ。東京大学教養学部教養学科卒業、文学修士（英文学）。ケンブリッジ大学Ph.D.（英文学）、同大学東洋学部日本語専任講師の職に就いた。同大学での講義にもとづくThe Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Literature (Cambridge University Press)のほか、著訳書は『ヨーロッパ・ロマン主義を読み直す』（共著、岩波書店）、『対訳 ワーズワス詩集』（岩波書店）、『イギリス文学』（共著、放送大学教育振興会）など。『定本 漱石全集』（岩波書店）第十三巻、第二十六巻の注解・訳注。大江健三郎ノーベル賞受賞記念講演英訳（講談社インターナショナル）。東京大学名誉教授。
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