Translations
October Thoughts
after Jean Follain
Nothing beats
an old wine
savoured alone
as early evening
coppers the hills,
no huntsman now
drawing a bead
on the beasts of the plain.
Our friends’ sisters
(the radio bleats
of wars to come)
look lovelier
(an insect settles
and moves on again).
A Blaze becomes Fire
after Valeria Ferraro
The original text’s embrace
the translator has rendered hug
Where there was written antidote
he puts the word cure in its place,
as if he thinks interchangeable
this instant and eternity.
The text writes poverty.
Bruised limbs
are enobled to wounds.
The past’s lineaments
freightless and frigid
become folk memory,
the art of the ancients.
The text reads contumely.
A blaze becomes fire
domesticating
the worst luck going.
The text describes an empty sky;
he translates pellucid.
A woman is darning
in a dark kitchen:
the translator writes sewing.
Mirror
after Wisława Szymborska
Yes, I remember that wall
in our ruined city. A block
gutted almost to the sixth floor.
a mirror on the fourth,
unbelievably intact, still
resolutely attached.
It reflected no one’s face now,
no hands tilted a hat,
there was no door opposite,
nothing you could call
a room, or a flat.
It was as if on vacation –
only the busy sky
preened itself there:
clouds wandering in free air,
bright rains rinsing the dust of ruins,
birds in mid-flight,
stars and rising suns . .
And so, like every well-made thing,
it worked on irreproachably,
with a professional want of surprise.