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‘for isaac rosenberg’ 

anthology edited by Kenneth Morgan and Almut Schlepper. A second translation
appearedin 2004 by Denise Blake,^78 but I here quote in full only Sewell’s translation
because it is, on the whole, the more attentive to Rosenberg’s poetry and is, as such,
the more fruitful version for this discussion. For example, Sewell writes:

Then I thought of you, Isaac Rosenberg

war-weary in the ‘torn fields of France’

—lines which immediately invoke—and in fact quote from—Rosenberg’s ‘Break
of Day in the Trenches’ (1916):

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life,

Bondstothewhimsofmurder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.^79

Blake’s translation reads:

With that, I think of you, Isaac Rosenberg

war-worn on the overthrown fields of France.

There is of course the inherent danger of what is lost—or, in this case gained—in
translation. Yet, as the author of this ‘poem of repossession’,O Searcaigh would ́
seem to be concerned more with giving voice to ‘people trapped helplessly by social
or historical forces’^80 than with the problems of his translation into English. In this
poem, giving voice to the voiceless Rosenberg—in whatever language will be by
othersheardmostclearly—seemsjustas(ifnotmore)importanttoO Searcaigh as ́
findingle mot juste. Sewell’s translation in its entirety reads:

At dawn, we gave up our courting

out in the wilderness. Larks soared

from the bog-holes and hollows of Prochlais.

Then I thought of you, Isaac Rosenberg,

war-weary in the ‘torn fields of France’,

stunned by the siren larks, one dawn

as you returned to your camp over the ruined

bones of friends, shaken, with bombs

pouncing on the red and black battlefield.

The larks’ joy between air and water

brought your poems across eternity’s barricade, line

by line, stutteringly, scared, like soldiers in battle,

(^78) Denise Blake, ‘For Isaac Rosenberg’, inTake a Deep Breath(Cladnageeragh: Summer Palace
Press, 2004), 63–4. 79
Rosenberg, ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’, 128.
(^80) O Searcaigh, interviewed by John Brown, ́ In the Chair, 257–8.