![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
#radch pop songs
Also I did not just find, while going through my old poetry-in-translation files, the skeleton of a Highlander/Imperial Radch crossover that exists solely so that Methos can teach Breq these very old songs:
We are the ancillaries who perform traditional choral music.
All of us demonstrate appropriate concern.
We love benefit, propriety and justice
Unlike you uncivilized people.
There is traditional choral music with no inherent political message
But we find that unsatisfactory.
Citizens who collect such music have no understanding of the purpose of a civilized empire.
They are not even concerned about the rations of transportee field hands.
If you find your current conditions unsatisfactory,
Use a stringed instrument until your dissatisfaction disperses.
Some citizens prefer to act when they perceive problems
But I will continue to collect traditional choral music instead.
I am not concerned with the level of skill demonstrated in the melody
Or the scansion
And prefer songs that are not in a civilized language
They need not even use civilized poetic forms.
Do you recall the incident at Garsedd?
That is the sort of battle I prefer
Garsedd no longer exists in any form,
But I still recall their best choral music.
So you should willingly become an ancillary who performs traditional choral music.
We carry portable stringed instruments
When we fight for benefit, propriety, and justice.
Raise your shields, prepare your weapons, and perform traditional choral music!
I've traveled extensively throughout the galaxy
And become acquainted with many Significant beings
Therefore I am certain I have been moving toward a destination
But time passes and planets move in their orbits
And the poetic forms that once seemed to give meaning to life no longer do.
I know that I will determine, after everything is completed,
That I should have remained a cloistered religious devotee.
My patron courageously moves goods and persons across borders without the formality of customs;
Her romantic and sexual attentions are more than sufficient.
Or she is a poet, or an officer from a rogue ship,
With her firm and muscular thighs and arms
With a small portable stringed instrument or an angry grin and the body of a former client in a stasis device intended for food storage.
At this point the traditional musical structure generally calls for something incomprehensible or horrifying involving nonhuman diplomats to occur.
[line of rhythmic phonemes with no semantic content]
I'm singing of undeveloped wooded areas or a tea-shop or a planet with large expanses of liquid water
[line of rhythmic phonemes with no semantic content]
You may disregard or delete any sections not currently applicable.
And my patron is come back from traveling in space,
Or marshy areas, or areas of ecological communities that are diagnostic of ongoing overexploitation of pastureland,
Beautiful young person, she sings, oh tell Station to allow me entry to your quarters,
Or area of cultivated woody plants,
And she intends benefit to me
Or does not intend benefit
Or she ignores me altogether.
I sent my patron a message as I was taken to the execution chamber,
But she had become an officer on a rogue ship and was unreachable,
And the ancient pipes made noises in the wind and the bov were in their shelters,
And we all drank arrack until we needed medical treatment.
I am not unconcerned about the biomodifications you have made to your genitalia,
And I will be able to recognize you due to this.
And we spent some time engaging in civilized conversation until she stole a small item of value from me.
Then we sang and danced and were unable to accurately determine our location, although the position of a natural satellite in the sky allowed us to establish the planet's axial tilt.
[line of rhythmic phonemes with no semantic content]
No one gives proper attention or values this above the call of a nocturnal predatory avian,
[line of rhythmic phonemes with no semantic content]
You may disregard or delete any sections not currently applicable.
We are the ancillaries who perform traditional choral music.
All of us demonstrate appropriate concern.
We love benefit, propriety and justice
Unlike you uncivilized people.
There is traditional choral music with no inherent political message
But we find that unsatisfactory.
Citizens who collect such music have no understanding of the purpose of a civilized empire.
They are not even concerned about the rations of transportee field hands.
If you find your current conditions unsatisfactory,
Use a stringed instrument until your dissatisfaction disperses.
Some citizens prefer to act when they perceive problems
But I will continue to collect traditional choral music instead.
I am not concerned with the level of skill demonstrated in the melody
Or the scansion
And prefer songs that are not in a civilized language
They need not even use civilized poetic forms.
Do you recall the incident at Garsedd?
That is the sort of battle I prefer
Garsedd no longer exists in any form,
But I still recall their best choral music.
So you should willingly become an ancillary who performs traditional choral music.
We carry portable stringed instruments
When we fight for benefit, propriety, and justice.
Raise your shields, prepare your weapons, and perform traditional choral music!
I've traveled extensively throughout the galaxy
And become acquainted with many Significant beings
Therefore I am certain I have been moving toward a destination
But time passes and planets move in their orbits
And the poetic forms that once seemed to give meaning to life no longer do.
I know that I will determine, after everything is completed,
That I should have remained a cloistered religious devotee.
My patron courageously moves goods and persons across borders without the formality of customs;
Her romantic and sexual attentions are more than sufficient.
Or she is a poet, or an officer from a rogue ship,
With her firm and muscular thighs and arms
With a small portable stringed instrument or an angry grin and the body of a former client in a stasis device intended for food storage.
At this point the traditional musical structure generally calls for something incomprehensible or horrifying involving nonhuman diplomats to occur.
[line of rhythmic phonemes with no semantic content]
I'm singing of undeveloped wooded areas or a tea-shop or a planet with large expanses of liquid water
[line of rhythmic phonemes with no semantic content]
You may disregard or delete any sections not currently applicable.
And my patron is come back from traveling in space,
Or marshy areas, or areas of ecological communities that are diagnostic of ongoing overexploitation of pastureland,
Beautiful young person, she sings, oh tell Station to allow me entry to your quarters,
Or area of cultivated woody plants,
And she intends benefit to me
Or does not intend benefit
Or she ignores me altogether.
I sent my patron a message as I was taken to the execution chamber,
But she had become an officer on a rogue ship and was unreachable,
And the ancient pipes made noises in the wind and the bov were in their shelters,
And we all drank arrack until we needed medical treatment.
I am not unconcerned about the biomodifications you have made to your genitalia,
And I will be able to recognize you due to this.
And we spent some time engaging in civilized conversation until she stole a small item of value from me.
Then we sang and danced and were unable to accurately determine our location, although the position of a natural satellite in the sky allowed us to establish the planet's axial tilt.
[line of rhythmic phonemes with no semantic content]
No one gives proper attention or values this above the call of a nocturnal predatory avian,
[line of rhythmic phonemes with no semantic content]
You may disregard or delete any sections not currently applicable.
no subject
no subject
no subject
All of us demonstrate appropriate concern...
no subject
The tune to the third one is this, although I seem to have been working from a slightly different version of the lyrics.
The second one is starting about 3:45 in this clip (not as well-known as the others, but the only one of the set I could actually do from memory...)
no subject
no subject