Literature in Translation |
“Guaranteed By Clouds,” “Cry As a Bird,” “How Little Use I Am,” “Winter,” “Promise to a Dove” & “Birthdays”
“I was here. / I pass through / without a trace. / The elms at the roadside / wave to me as I approach, / green blue golden greeting, / and forget me / before I’ve gone by.”
Literature in Translation |
“In San Mamete With Morris: In Memoriam,” “Death of a Painter” & “Buried Crowd”
“Of many dreams, now this: plane parts / buried in the fields. Black iron / blanketed with moss over the years, / a broken wing. / Never had a thing to say. Not one thing.”
Literature in Translation |
from The Abduction / Le Rapt
“Me, I’m divorced / Don’t panic / it’s not so bad / except if you’d been there / my child wouldn’t have been taken from me”
Literature in Translation |
“The First Step,” “Dionysos in Procession,” “The Satrapy,” “Sculptor of Tyana” & “The Displeasure of Selefkides”
“It’s hard on you, born and raised as you were / for the noblest, most magnificent challenges, / that this frustrating destiny of yours / keeps blocking recognition and success. / Trivial things are forever in your way, / pointless small concerns, despondency.”
Literature in Translation |
“Onwards,” “Too Philosophical,” “Doll,” “The Comfort of Complaining,” “The Benefits of Talking,” “To a Writer,” “Self-Reflection” & “I Wish I Had”
“How ghostly my life / in its fall and rise. / Always I see myself waving to myself, /’ floating away from the one waving. // I see myself as laughter, / as deep mourning again, ‘/ as a wild weaver of talk; / but all this falls away.”
Literature in Translation |
“Sacred Sun,” “My Language,” “Poetry’s Silence” & “X-Askuñ”
“They ask me about my language, how it is made. / I tell them they should carry a pitcher to the creek. // They want to know about this wailing. / I tell them to walk in a place of rocks.”
Literature in Translation |
“The hood of my sweatshirt,” “On the other side of the Atlantic” & “O Street”
“Here, the day I put on my blue ‘Just Do It’ / and pulled the hood over my head for shelter / from the relentless cold also running down the street, / I offered myself to death by / police. Just for the hood. And my skin.”
Literature in Translation |
from Anima
“The body was interspersed and interwoven by veins of light. It / floats in the air. On its gray death shroud it floats high above the city / in the green summer air in the flood of light which pulls along with it / city, hospital, people in raging swirls upward …”
Literature in Translation |
from The Thorn Puller
“I went to Asakusa in Tokyo hoping to gain 46,000 days’ worth of virtue. Tradition says that a visit to Sensoji temple on that day is the equivalent of making pilgrimages for 46,000 days in a row. I’d planned to meet a gardening expert in Tokyo for work, and July 10 was the only day before the Obon holidays I had any free time.”
Literature in Translation |
from Final Judgements
“In art, as in any other activity, it is advisable to imitate for as long as possible. Only when there is no other choice does it become tolerable to be original.”
Literature in Translation |
from Motherfield
“Every year the motherfield is a bride / under a thin muslin of snow, / under the strict supervision of tradition, / it is smoothed with rakes, / combed with ploughs, / inseminated.”
Literature in Translation |
“I am Watermelon, I Am Lamb” and “Skin Mole”
“My family used me to drink water, / they thought I was a tin cup. / This goes back to the day I cupped my palm in prayer, / and to the times I’d fallen but didn’t break.”
Literature in Translation |
from Blood Red
“Thinking about my husband kept making me heave; sweet, soft retches. I managed the bouts of nausea with lemon rind or by peeling the skin from my lips. It took us time, orphaned little souls that we were, to leave one other.”
Literature in Translation |
“Village,” “Poems,” “Birds,” “Deer,” “Explanation,” “Countryside,” “Zapatoca,” & “Tree”
“The light / of words // with which / we look at / light.”
Literature in Translation |
“After the Storm,””Daily Routine” & “At night you sweep …”
“Everything is so perfectly clear, there are no more secrets, the birds settle in their place and the nights find shelter beneath the deserts. Out of your eye, a small stone softly rolls.”