Friday, January 13
TRANSLATION is there a zone of darkness between all languages, a black river that swallows words and stories and transforms them? here sentences must disrobe, begin to roam, learn to swim, not lose the memory that nests in their bodies, a secret nucleus. will the columbine's blue be a shade of violet when it reaches the other side, and the red bee balm become a pear, cinnamon- sweet? will my tench be missing a fin in the light of this new language? will it have to learn to crawl or to walk upright? does language know how to draw another toward it or only how to turn the other one away? can each word, then, risk the transit, believe itself invulnerable, dipped in pitch and hard as steel? (Maja Haderlap, translated from German by Tess Lewis)