How do the Birds arrange the
Translation of their Languages?²
There is no Real or True Translation –
There’s only Fantasy that there might be³
The Poem goes from the Poet’s Gibberish to
The Gibberish of the Vulgate and Back again⁴
A Good Translation Enriches its Adoptive Tongue⁵
Translation is more Ambivalence than Equivalence⁶
These are Lines for Translation into Any Language⁷
We encourage them to Perfect the Language –
And then we Command them to Translate⁸
The Loosening of the Mother Tongue is
A Boon to the Unmaking of the Person⁹
You Express yourself in Fiery
Shrieks of another Tongue¹⁰
¹ Laura Hershey, Translating the Crip
² Pablo Neruda tr. original, The Book of Questions LXIII
³ Steve Benson, Disconstitution
⁴ Wallace Stevens, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction
⁵ Carolyn Forché, Introductionto Against Forgetting
⁶ Margaret Noodin, And You Have Set Me on Fire
⁷ James Fenton, Lines for Translation into Any Language
⁸ Derek Jarman, Marsilio Ficino
⁹ Dzifa Benson, Nkofofodo or The Moulding of My Drinking Name
¹⁰ Italo Calvino tr. Tim Parks, Implosion