le do zilcrino tu'a do co'u jimpe ge'ecu'idai
Now that is an untranslatable knee-slapper!
I can translate it, even keeping the haiku form... given some liberty of interpretation:
Your Ideal of green no longer understands you. But what do you care?
But you're right, that's not very much like the original! mi'e jezrax
I think zilcrino means zi'o crino, which means, "green thing for which green-ness isn't an applicable concept", as in the famous line "green ideas sleep furiously". Also, dai doesn't mean a question; I can't tell if you took that into account or not. But breaking the syllable count, I render up the terrible:
- ge'ecu'idai means "You must feel some unspecified emotion to a neutral degree." I think "But what do you care?" is about as good a rendition of that as we can hope for! zo'o
- Only Lojban can convey the delicate difference between ge'ecu'i and ge'eru'e!
Your green thing for which green-ness isn't an applicable concept
Stops understanding about you.
You're apathetic in your unconcern.
Somehow it lacks the punch of the original!
Perhaps somebody would like to add the classical limericks to this page?
- doi dirba
- nu porpi lo ckana
- se zasti lo ninmu poi cisma
- le flira te kerfa lo nanmu
- le mumvlali'ipemci