Having tried to write a sonnet the other day, I felt like trying a different poetic form. The Clerihew is something of a lost art form but I was obsessed with them for a few weeks in about 1998. My Favourite was
The people of Spain think Cervantes
Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes:
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy.
And I can’t do a direct translation, so I decided to have a crack at recreating the spirit of the thing in Portuguese. I know some of the words are in a weird order, but I hope I haven’t stretched the grammar too far and it’s allowable within the poetic form…
Camões, segundo os portugueses,
Vale mais, uma dúzia de vezes,
Do que Shakespeare, o que provoca uma exclamação
De qualquer cidadão da minha nação.
I crowdsourced an answer to that question and one of the two respondents replied in the positive at least so I’m calling that a victory. Both suggested I sort out the metre, but Clerihews are allowed to be rambling and uneven so I haven’t even really tried to do that. If you’re curious, you could do worse than check out u/urinaRabugenta’s answer under my post here, for a more professional version. It’s better in every way, especially the second line (which is a real dog s breakfast in my version). The only thing I don’t like about it is rhyming – ção with – dão in the last line. Apart from that, it’s a banger! Notes underneath explain the reason for the changes. It’s good stuff.
Luso 