For the last couple of weeks, I've been dallying with an experiment. Rather than writing in English, I've been writing in Bulgarian (which I'm learning in a DIY kind of way) and translating the results back into English. Being far from fluent in Bulgarian, I've had to work with a very limited vocabulary and very limited knowledge of idiom and grammar. In many ways, the results have been fairly hit and miss, but one or two of these efforts (which almost certainly read very badly in Bulgarian) seem OK - perhaps because, to me, they seem to be wholly different to what I would 'normally' write and perhaps because trying to think in another language results in connections which I wouldn't have otherwise made.
Weather forecast
Today it will rain butter,
a bookish wind will blow,
the sun will wash dishes
and the clouds will play
the bagpipes. Don’t worry.
This is normal when
love is allowed to write
the weather forecast.
It’s best to walk barefoot
and carry a big coat.
Tom Phillips, 2015
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