on the 20th anniversary
It's been said
that 9/11
was not a failure
of security
but of imagination -
it's hard to argue,
and even more
failure of love
and hope
those two shimmering towers
of heart and of mind
that we must build
and re-build
every
day.
What will be said of him
is that he muddled through,
and it will be true:
He kept his goals to himself
(if he had any at all)
because he didn't want
his failures on display
and he never had much clarity
on what success meant
anyway.
Then one day
someone came along
purely by chance
and he looked up
(from the book he was reading)
and fell instantly deeply in love,
he knew it was love
because he saw details
in someone else
he had never seen before
in anyone,
and he said 'here I am'
and he said 'I am here'
and he stepped forward
out of line
as a young man would
who volunteers
for a dangerous mission,
fearful but unafraid
to live.
This is just to say
I'm sorry to hear
your dog died.
I know how much you loved
that dog.
She was a good dog,
one of the best,
learned some commands,
never chewed the furniture,
never shitted or peed in the house.
I know how you enjoyed
taking her for walks
in the neighbourhood.
How watching her
playing with the other dogs
at the dog-park brought you joy,
she never fought.
How good-natured she was.
How she wagged her tail
when you came home
from work at the end of the day -
and seemed to be able
to read all your moods.
She'd come to you
when you were sad or depressed,
and stay away
when you were upset.
How attentive she was,
she seemed to understand,
and easy to please,
all she needed
was to have her fur stroked
or occasionally her belly scratched
to be happy. I know you’ll
keep great memories of her,
as a member of the family.
Do you think you'll get another one?
You wanted
this entire time
to make the world a better place
in whatever way you could,
and if not the whole world
then at least, some tiny,
forsaken corner of it,
but trust me, when I say,
all your efforts will come to naught
without a good exit strategy.
There are few things in life
as difficult as leaving,
it rarely goes as planned
and there's never a good time,
so, ask yourself
how will I make my escape?
Will I be the desperate soul
waiting to be plucked
from the embassy rooftop
or will I be flying the helicopter
when the terrorists take over?
And what will become
of the ones inevitably
left behind?
I first heard of consolation
when I was home from school
with a fever.
A daytime TV game-show prize
for the loser;
Hamburger Helper,
a year's worth of Uncle Ben's
or Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat.
The host always apologized
as 'Johnny', the disembodied voice of reassurance,
described the fabulous parting 'gifts'
they would receive
for being a good sport,
a set of American Tourister luggage,
a Mr. Coffee (slugger Joe DiMaggio's favourite),
an endless supply of Dentyne
for fresher breath and cleaner teeth.
Sadly you didn't get the car,
but here's some Turtle Wax
lots of Turtle Wax.
I was riveted by those second placers,
how grateful they seemed,
smiling as the host's delicate consoling hand
gently shoved them off stage
so he can get on with the show.
A curtain inside me would open
as they disappeared
into the unlit wings
of their private lives,
something in me
wanted to follow them,
needed to know
if it all turned out okay for them,
if the consolation they'd received
had been enough,
and I took to heart
the message
that whatever happened,
whatever disappointments,
none of us leaves this life
empty-handed.
They can't wait to leave behind
the boredom of high-priced cars, 150-foot yachts,
and palatial estates with tennis courts
and private golf courses -
sooo yesterday.
To keep up with the Jones's
billionaires nowadays, head to outer space,
exit the planet on phallic rockets
(one called Virgin for heaven's sake)
'cause this crowded sphere can no longer contain
their magnificent cosmic egos -
one small step for a man
one giant leap for narcissism and hubris
at Mach speeds.
When they cross the Karman line,
break free of the earthbound force
holding you and me here,
they will look down at us
(which is actually the point)
through an atmospheric haze,
unstrap themselves from their capsule seats
and float upside down
giddy as kindergarten children
flouting the class rules.
After a few minutes, parachutes deployed,
they will land safely
in the desert
and hold a press conference.
They will thank all the hyper-educated folks
who made it possible, say that today
they realized a childhood dream, tout
the future of space travel for everyone,
and declare they've been changed personally
forever,
while the rest of us ponder
what if anything
has been learned.
A new one for me. A translation. I'm talking to my eldest daughter and we're talking about language, one of our most favourite subjects, because she is completing an MA in Occupational Linguistics (essentially how to teach language), and we're talking about the poem she has written for me for Father's Day. I ask her to read it for me (which she resists doing). And this gets us onto the subject of the performance of poetry, which is something I've been thinking about a lot. I tell her that I've come to the conclusion that poetry is truly a spoken form and when I write it these days it's with performance in mind. I tell her that I've been listening to poetry being read and recited and it makes all the difference, it completely changes the experience of the poem. And she says, "You have to hear Paul Celan reading 'Todesfuge'." Of course, I know the poem she is referring to. It may be the most famous poem about the Holocaust. But I hadn't re-visited it in a long time, and hadn't been aware that recordings existed of Celan reciting it, which got me excited. Also, I don't speak German (my daughter does, she studied it in university) so any time I've read the poem it was in English translation, and the translated poem left me cold, it seemed extremely opaque. My daughter convinced me to give it another try, saying that my knowledge of Yiddish would help with the German. I took her advice and suffice to say, she was right. Celan's recitation of Todesfuge is deeply moving. I listened to it repeatedly, not understanding half of what I was hearing, but getting the gist, and simply allowing myself to be carried away by the timbre of his voice, the sounds and rhythms he was producing. His recitation builds and builds to a dramatic climax and denouement in an unexpected way. Then I began delving more closely into the texts and the meanings of the words. I found several translations online, and frankly was fairly disappointed. Most of them simply didn't square at all with what I heard in Celan's propulsive performance of the poem: the way the contrapunctal repetition emphasizes the growing darkness and ominousness of his themes, the underlying moral outrage that courses through the poem, and the political resonances of Germany under fascism that he is conveying. The best translation I found online was performed by Galway Kinnell, and it's worth a listen, but there's something too loose about the translation that nagged at me, thought it needed to be tighter and sharper.
There is something about 'Todesfuge' that both begs for translation, and defies translation. It is a deceptively simple poem in some respects. The language is not complicated, and it's that mixture of the banal and an underlying darkness that makes it so compelling. I decided to give translating it a shot (pun not intended). In the process of my efforts the poem opened up to me in surprising ways. And of course I became familiar for the first time with the limitations of translation, and the problems associated with finding but not overstepping the boundary between translation and transformation. How far can a translator stray from the literal words in order to convey their meanings? What I've produced is admittedly a failure, as all translations are. I may have pushed the boundary too far in some aspects, and yet in other ways I believe I hit on some resonances of the poem that other translations have missed. For example, in the poem, the phrase 'Ein Mann wohnt im Haus' means literally 'A man lives in a house' which is how all the translations I read translated it. But I read it differently for a number of reasons, and decided to translate it as 'A Man of the House'. My reasoning is manifold. First, I wanted to maintain the capitalization of the 'Man' and 'House' of the original which signifies to me that the poet is not simply referring to any man in any house. I don’t believe he is referring to himself, the poet. Rather he appears to mean ‘a man’ in both the banal sense and also the mythical sense of the German man in the German house. His meaning may be intended to resonate with the 'master of Death' he later refers to, and the idea of Germans being the political and racial masters of their house/country (which also resonates with other racial references 'blue eye' and 'golden hair'). Second, my knowledge of Yiddish told me that 'Mann' can also mean 'husband', so translating the phrase as 'Man of the House' resonates with the references to the women of the poem 'Margarete' and 'Shulamit' in a new way. Another example of a translation choice I made that differs from other versions, the word 'schreibt' literally means 'writes' and is usually translated that way. I use 'scribbles' and my reasoning is because I think the sound of 'scribble' more closely resembles the original 'schreibt' and also conveys in sound a frenzied feeling. These are just two examples of some of the thinking that under-girds my choices. There are dozens of others, and no doubt I will be making many more, as the poem evolves for me in re-readings and re-listenings.
Without further ado, here is my version, with the original German underneath.
DEATH FUGUE by Paul Celan
translation B. Glen Rotchin (with help from many other translations)
Black milk of daybreak we drink it in evening
we drink it at noon and in morning, we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we grave-dig the sky where no one lies crowded.
A Man of the House plays with serpents
and he scribbles, he scribbles as Deutschland darkens, your golden haired Margarete,
he scribbles and steps out from the house
and the flashing stars, he whistles for his dogs,
summons his Jews to grave-dig the ground.
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you in morning and at noon, we drink you in evening
we drink and we drink
A Man of the House plays with serpents
and he scribbles, he scribbles as Deutschland darkens, your golden haired Margarete,
your ashen haired Shulamit,
we grave-dig the sky where no one lies crowded.
He shouts to dig deeper in the ground, sing and play for each other,
he grabs his holstered iron, he swings, eyes of blue,
spades dig deeper, while they play for each other to dance.
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon and in morning we drink you in evening
we drink and we drink
A Man of the House, your golden haired Margarete,
your ashen haired Shulamit, he plays with serpents
he shouts 'play sweet as death', Death is a master from Deutschland,
he shouts 'stroke the violins darker', then rise in the air as smoke
to your grave in the clouds where you don't lie crowded.
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon, Death is a master from Deutschland
we drink you in evening and in morning we drink and we drink,
Death is a master from Deutschland, eyes of blue,
he pumps you with lead, his aim is true,
A Man of the House plays with serpents, your golden haired Margarete
he hunts us with his men, grants our grave in the sky,
he plays with serpents and dreams Death is a master from Deutschland
your golden haired Margarete
your ashen haired Shulamit.
