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 ________________________________________________________________________ Emanuel E. García, Leaf Thoughts, One Hundred Poems, 2013 |