Friday, 12 February 2010

poems about translation


A delightful package arrived today in the post from Bookthug in Canada. Among the goodies in it is a collection of poetry, We Are Here by the Danish poet Niels Hav, translated by Patrick Friesen & P.K. Brask. Poems impossible not to like, much like their publisher. The final 'Epigram' inspires me to inaugurate an occasional series of poems about translation:

You can spend an entire life
in the company of words
not ever finding
the right one

Just like a wretched fish
wrapped in Hungarian newspapers.
For one thing it is dead,
for another it doesn't understand
Hungarian.


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