Centre for Romanian Studies

Miriam Waddington (Canadian Poet: 1917-2004)

Poetry in Translation (LXXXII) – Miriam Waddington (1917-2004) Canadian Poet

“Thou didst say me”:

“Thou didst say me”:

Late as last summer

Thou didst say to me, love,

I chose you, you, only you

Oh, the delicate, de-

licate serpent of your lips

the golden lie bedazzled

me with wish and flesh

of joy and I was fool.

– 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 –

Mi-ai spus

Nu mai departe decat vara trecuta

Mi-ai spus, dragostea mea

te-am ales pe tine, numai pe tine

O, delicatul, de-

li-ca-tul zambet tradator al buzelor tale,

fermecatoarea minciuna m’a orbit

cu dorul si flacara trupeasca

a bucuriei si am fost un neghiob.

Romanian Translation by Constantin ROMAN, first published in Bucharest, “Contemporanul”, 1965.

(Extract from the forthcoming volume of memoirs “Defying the Idiocracy”)

Biography:

Miriam Waddington (née Dworkin, 1917 – 2004) was a Canadian poet, short story writer and translator. She joined the English department at York University. She retired in 1983. Waddington was part of a Montreal circle that included F.R. Scott, Irving Layton and Louis Dudek. Some of her published poems and stories have been translated and published in Russia, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Italy, South America and Romania – the latter (see above) being translated by Constantin Roman. An excerpt of her poem figures on the Canadian one-hundred dollar note: “Do we remember that somewhere above the sky in some child’s dream, perhaps, Jacques Cartier is still sailing, always on his way always about to discover a new Canada?”