Set 16: Mondo de Mono Mono Mono

Translated by John Gallas

1.
If you marry a monkey...
          Anon/Proverb (twentieth century/Egypt)

If you marry a monkey because it’s rich,
Try and remember which is which:

The money’s the one that pays,
The monkey’s the one that stays.

                                     *

2.
The Two Travellers
          Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794/France)

Thomas and Lubin, the best of friends,
were walking to town one day,
when Thomas stops and cries, ‘Hey-hey!
Here’s a purse full of sovereigns!’, and pockets it right away.
‘Haha,’ cries Lubin, ‘how lucky we are!
Manna from Heaven, haha!’
Thomas says, ‘We isn’t right:
how lucky I am’. By now it was nearly night,
so they hurry on, the best of friends, over the plain, and then
they take the shortcut through the woods – right into the robbers’ den!
Thomas is all atremble (with very good cause).
‘We’ve had it,’ he says. And Lubin says, ‘No.
We isn’t right: you’ve had it.’ And lo!
he scarpers into the sycamores.
Thomas gets caught (too scared to run)
and surrenders the sovereigns so recently won.

The man who is selfish when Fortune smiles and is kind
Has no friends when Misfortune bites his behind.

                                     *

3.
Days
          Kočo Racin (1908–1943/Macedonia)

Days tug heavy at our throats like stone yokes.
Labourers, hirelings, with weights ...