A good Translation
Enriches its adoptive tongue.²
The Poem goes from the Poet’s gibberish to
The gibberish of the Vulgate and back again.³
We express ourselves in Fiery
Shrieks of another Tongue!⁴
There is no real or true translation—
There’s only Fantasy that there might be.⁵
Translation is more Ambivalence than equivalence.⁶
The Loosening of the Mother tongue is
A boon to the Unmaking of the person!⁷
How do the birds arrange the
Translation of their Languages?⁸
These are lines for translation into Any Language.⁹
We encourage them to Perfect the language—
And then we command them to Translate!¹⁰
¹ Laura Hershey, Translating the Crip
² Carolyn Forché, Introduction to Against Forgetting
³ Wallace Stevens, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction
⁴ Italo Calvino tr. Tim Parks, Implosion
⁵ Steve Benson, Disconstitution
⁶ Margaret Noodin, And You Have Set Me on Fire
⁷ Dzifa Benson, Nkofofodo or The Moulding of My Drinking Name
⁸ Pablo Neruda tr. original, The Book of Questions LXIII
⁹ James Fenton, Lines for Translation into Any Language
¹⁰ Derek Jarman, Marsilio Ficino