And came home with beggar ticks in his pubis And the light syrup stink of
urine in his jeans, Godawful b.o., sat on the bed unlaced his redwings And
lay back on brown blood stains in the unmade Sheets and the ferruginous odor
of her period, saying Holy holy holy, I do not feel kindly To the
copperhead in the copple-stones and the brown Recluse making its nest in my
underwear,
Texture, impression, feeling, meaning: to sliver away any of these aspects in a
translation is to diminish the work—and that’s not only a literary failure but
an ethical one. It’s a very mysterious process, translation. The translator must
disappear into the original, must absorb the music of another’s mind. And then
the translator must return full force, with everything she has ever learned
about the art itself—about poetry if it is poetry she is translating. In its
iterative obliterations and reincarnations, it’s much more a spiritual than a
transcriptional activity.
