Translators                                                        


            Let’s face it, you take it on the chin
            From every angle
 
            If you’re not murdering something,
            You’re making pallid tapestries
            Out of rich whole coloured cloth
            Or worse yet, you’re ‘re-imagining’ a text – 
            Which is supposed to be high praise
            But to me is highly dubious
            Because imagining something in the first place
            Is already more than enough
 
            And then I hear that whenever you guys
            (my way of including both, or should I say all, genders?)
            Get together it’s mainly to disagree,
            A convention of quibblers and sticklers
            Trying to make nice as you sharpen your daggers in full view:
            The circle Dante forgot to mention
 
            At your most successful
            You drive us away from what you’ve sweated over
            (If, that is, you’re really what you say you are) and
            Prick us lazy bums off the cushy sofa of our mother tongue
            Into the arms of a femme fatale
            But even if your critics have a point or two
            They’re missing the barnyard wall
            Which is my point, after all,
            Because I came to praise rather than bury
 
            I know what you do
 
            How you take these words, for want of a better word
            (And now that I think about it, a word by any other word is just as enigmatic
            But I’ll get to that later, I hope) –
 
            How you take these signal mysteries,
            Groups, shards, and reams of them,
            Tribes and flocks and gatherings,
            Strung, unstrung or occasionally alone,
            Perched like a hot potato in the middle of a plate
 
            And you sniff and taste, sift and weigh,
            Pause and ponder from every side,
            Cock your ear and sometimes wait
            Ever so long for the discords in the secret melodies
            That few would dare to snatch
 
            You’ll run your hands over them and feel the sting
            Of a glassy surface
            Or gaze until you see the bite of their eyes
 
            But mostly you’ll breathe,
            Slowly and deeply enough to fill your lungs,
            Now crowded with perfumes,
            To sound a conch and blow a mangled tune
 
            It’s what we all do all the time, isn’t it?
 
            The other night I tried to sing my heart out
            But it didn’t come out right
            It never does
 
            So instead I drew my lover close and kissed as
            Sweet and long as I could bear
 
            She kissed me back in kind
            And in our hush I swore there was enough – 
 
            If not the whole, at least the more of it


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            Emanuel E. García, Leaf Thoughts, One Hundred Poems2013