BLUE

Jeremy Noel-Tod

@jntod.bsky.social

Poetry critic and editor. Norwich is my New York. Writing about poetry here: someflowerssoon.substack.com/

1.2k followers574 following1.5k posts

JNjntod.bsky.socialJan 24, 2024 11:43am

Occasionally, here in Norwich, I'm in touch with a local poet called Ron Nevett, who writes exclusively about our city and its history. He always rhymes, and today he sent me this free translation of one of Horace's Odes. So, for Norwich fans and Horace fans -- a niche audience, I know -- here it is

Horace in Norwich
Odes II.15

Huge new-builds fill the fields now Cringleford
A village fit for Audis not for ploughs is
Where new Broads fatten koi carp and the wood
Has fallen to strapped saplings ringing houses

Where once in spring a farmer might still scent a
Field of mustard flowers on the breeze
See, all the planters that a garden centre
Stocks now that patios have buried trees

And shrubs hide wall-sized flatscreens from the sun.
That weren’t always this way, bor – on the doors
Of City Hall you’ll see how things were run
When those who made our food still made our laws

And civic spirit wove us on its loom:
No gentleman of Jarrolds would remortgage
For builder’s bills to add a garden room
When house prices went north around his cottage

And no-one then thought verges were a carpark –
Yet everyone knew what it was to build all
Things to last, and paid to leave their mark
In flint flushwork, on churches and the Guildhall

Ron Nevett

WPwillpooley.bsky.socialJan 24, 2024 12:02pm

it me

CKottocr.atJan 24, 2024 1:20pm

That’s very good! If a bit o tempora o mores - which to be fair is also a criticism to be levelled at Horace. Eheu fugaces labuntur anni.

Jeremy Noel-Tod

@jntod.bsky.social

Poetry critic and editor. Norwich is my New York. Writing about poetry here: someflowerssoon.substack.com/

1.2k followers574 following1.5k posts