What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our fifth series, What Translation Sparks, a group of poet-translators share a seminal experience in translation. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.
She can’t ask any longer to be loved. But who can ask to be loved? Nor that someone sit beside her to wait with her. Life slips away with all the gestures, with all the memories, with all its core strength, its beauty, which have foundered with her. Years ago she stopped speaking. How does she think? How does she link the diffuse, wobbly trajectories that lead here? And you?—she asked me once—
How do you come to know?
(Observaciones)
Ya no puede pedir que la quieran. ¿Pero quién puede pedir que lo quieran? Ni que se sienten a su lado a esperarla.
La vida se escabulle con todos los gestos, con todos los recuerdos, con toda la fuerza medular, la belleza, que se han hundido con ella. Hace años que no habla. ¿Cómo piensa? ¿Como liga los difusos, desiguales trayectos de estar ahí? ¿Y tú? —me preguntó una vez—
¿Cómo le haces para saber?
*
(Alzheimer’s. Follow-up)
Who is the President of this country? —Well, it depends; for some it’s one person; for others it is another. What is this called? — I don't know, doctor, because I don't use that; only you do. How many children do you have? — Quite a few.
What did you used to do? —Now you're going to ask me to draw a clock. Did you like to dance? — Yes, of course, of course I danced. And did you ever travel? —Yes, naturally. Where to? — Well, to the same place everyone went.
(Alzheimer. Seguimiento)
¿Quién es el presidente de este país? —Pues depende para unos es uno; para otros es otro. ¿Cómo se llama esto? —No sé, doctor, porque yo no uso eso; sólo usted. ¿Cuántos hijos tiene? —Muchos.
¿A qué se dedicaba usted antes? —Ahora me va a pedir que dibuje un reloj. ¿Usted bailaba? —Sí, claro, por supuesto que bailaba. ¿Y viajó alguna vez? —Sí, claro. ¿A donde? —Pues a donde iban todos.
"I chose to translate this whole book rather than another selected edition because, although composed of individual poems, It Must Be a Misunderstanding is really a deeply affecting book-length work whose force builds as the poems cycle through their sequences. The 'plot' follows a general trajectory—from early to late Alzheimer’s—with non-judgmental affection and compassionate watchfulness."
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"Nikki Giovanni—one of the great poets of any generation—still has much to impart in Make Me Rain, her hybrid autobiography of poems and prose. Given the tumultuous aspects of 2020, the disruptions and dislocations of quotidian and public life, there’s a refreshing discordance in reading Giovanni’s newest and especially personal collection."
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