NL Herzenberg translates Nina Kossman

Cockroach Prince

One woman noticed a cockroach, slowly and somehow lopsidedly crawling out from under her computer. Armed with a napkin (thank God, a whole pile of napkins was lying right there), she tried grabbing  the creature by its tail, although most likely it was some other part of the insect’s most unpleasant body, but the creature ran away from the napkin, quickly ran under the table and then, pursued by the merciless woman, ran across the floor to the front door, quickly and masterfully moving its legs … The woman’s napkin overtook him, her hand rushed at him like a snake on its prey, covered him completely – and then… she killed him and lived happily ever after. (No, she didn’t. This woman was not predisposed to happiness).

– What should I do with him now? the woman thought, sighing. Deep in thought, she opened the front door, shook out the contents of the napkin into the cold air … and she could not take her eyes off the unlucky creature as she watched the cockroach fly out of the napkin, growing transparent wings in the air, turning into a beautiful butterfly, and, in an instant, it was gone forever.

 

Таракан царевич

Одна женщина заметила таракана, медленно и как-то кривобоко выползающего из-под её компьютера. Вооружившись салфеткой (слава богу, целая груда салфеток валялась прямо под рукой), она было схватила его за хвост, хотя скорее всего, это было его малоприятное туловище, но он убежал от нацеленной в него салфетки, быстро спустился по столу и, преследуемый беспощадной женщиной, побежал по полу до самой входной двери, быстро-быстро семеня ножками… Тут женщинина салфетка его и настигла, ее рука бросилась на него, как коршун на дичь, накрыла его полностью – а что было потом… (“Суп с котом?” скажете вы? да нет, эта женщина любила котов). 

– И что мне с ним теперь делать? – подумала женщина, вздыхая. В глубокой задумчивости она открыла входную дверь, вытряхнула содержимое салфетки в холодный воздух… и не могла глаз оторвать от своего незадачливого питомца, всё смотрела, как таракан вылетает из салфетки, на лету наращивая прозрачные крылышки, превращаясь из таракана в красавицу-бабочку – и только его и видели.

 

How to be a Famous Poet

Once upon a time there lived a young man who wanted to be a poet. His father was a shoemaker who made the most beautiful shoes in the country because many years ago, when the father himself was a young man, he went to an older shoemaker who gave shoemaking classes to anyone who wanted to learn the trade, and that’s where the father, when he was still a young man, learned all the tricks of shoemaking. The young man knew that no one in his town was teaching poetry writing, and because he couldn’t write any poems himself yet, he started going to readings at Poetry Stars, a town coffee shop where, after drinks and elegant appetizers, long-haired poets and poetesses in sequin jackets that lit up at every long vowel, sang out their verses in front of the audiences still busy with their multi-colored drinks and unusual appetizers. One of the long-haired poets told him that, if you wanted to be a poet, all you had to do was to start reading in front of the public: there was no need to struggle writing poems in order to read them in “Poetry Stars”, all you had to do was get a reading date, and for that you needed the loving support of the most important poets, which meant that you could skip the initial step and instead of wasting time on writing poems, you could get to the end result right away, just be famous, so basically, said the long-haired poet, all you had to do was get a reading, that was the hardest and the most important part of being a poet, and this was what everyone here was trying to do.

“So what do you have to do in order to get a reading?” asked the young man.

“I will teach you a secret, son,” said the long-haired poet. “As I’ve already explained, all you have to do in order to be a poet is do a lot of poetry readings – prezentatzii, as we say in our town, and all you have to do in order to get a reading is bow deeply every time you see the most important poet, that’s enough to be a poet, said one of the poets. Just make a deep bow, and make sure he sees how deeply you bow to him. Now that you know the secret of poetry, young man, you’re well on your way to becoming the best young poet of your generation!” The young man did as he was told, and in less than two weeks since the day when long-haired poet had taught him the tricks of the trade, he had his own reading at the Poets’ Cabaret, and he realized that his teacher the long-haired poet, had been right in everything, including the little-known fact that there was no need to bring any of your own poems to the reading: you could simply say the vowels, stretching them so they sounded interesting: a-a-a-, o-o-o, u-u-u, o-o-o… The audience loved the young man’s avant-garde poetry, gray-haired editors of respectable publications approached the young man during the intermission with offers to publish his avant-garde poems in their journals, young women brought him bouquets of carnations, and all the other long-haired poets wanted to sit at his table and drink with him.

Only one thing bothered the young man: a strange creature that looked like a fat girl but was a bit too round to be either a girl or a boy, sat in a special chair, in a special enclosure, up above everyone’s tables, and every time the young man said his vowels and the audience clapped and screamed for more, the round creature in the enclosure said, “I like Miss Cinderella because she is nice. I like Miss Cinderella. She is nice.” And on and on it went like this, and only when the round creature was asleep, only then nothing about its feelings for Miss Cinderella issued from its mouth.

“Why can’t someone tell him to shut up during my readings?” asked the young man who was no longer just a young man but a famous poet.

“Ah, don’t you know who that is?” said one of the long-haired poets to the young-man-who-was-now-the-famous-poet.

“No,” said the young-man-who-was-now the-famous-poet. “So who is that creature?”

“Chief Poet of All Main Poets,” said the long-haired poet, bringing yet another glass of wine to his lips. “Without his approval no one, and I mean no one in the entire world, can be awarded the highest prize, the Mobel Prize, given by the World Academy annually to the best poet of the world. The prize, of course, is worth millions of dollars.”

At this point the young-man-who-was-now the-famous-poet regretted those times when he disrespected the round creature by shushing him when the creature said his usual Miss Cinderella lines during the young-man-who-was-now the-famous-poet’s reading. How could he have known that the creature was the Chief Poet of all Main Poets? And that the biggest annual poetry prize depended on the creature’s whim? From now on, the young-man-who-was-now the-famous-poet bowed deeply every time he passed beneath the enclosure where the round creature sat in his strange chair, but since the enclosure was above him, the young man’s deep bows were in vain, since it’s physically impossible to bow to that which is far above you, and therefore the creature could not appreciate the young man’s attempts to erase his previous disrespectful shushing of the creature, and the creature went on making his pronouncements on “Miss Cinderella” during the young-man-who-was-now the-famous-poet’s readings, and alas, it goes without saying that the Mobel Prize was never awarded to the young-man-who-was-now the-famous-poet.

 

Как стать знаменитым поэтом


Жил-был молодой человек, который хотел быть поэтом. Его отец был сапожником, знаменитым на всю страну изготовлением самых красивых ботинок, потому что много лет назад, когда сам отец был молодым человеком, он отыскал старого сапожника, проводившего занятия сапожного мастерства для всех, кто хотел преуспеть в этой профессии. Вот так отец, будучи еще молодым человеком, узнал все хитрости своего будущего ремесла. Молодой человек знал, что в его родном городе никто не ведет занятия по поэтическому мастерству, а сам он не умел писать стихи, и поэтому решил – была не была, начну регулярно посещать поэтическое кабаре. И вот он стал проводить каждый вечер в городском кафе, где после напитков и элегантных закусок, длинноволосые поэты, а также поэтессы в разноцветных куртках, выступали со своими стихами перед публикой, все еще занятой интересными напитками и закусками. Один из длинноволосых поэтов сказал ему по секрету, что для того, чтобы стать поэтом вовсе не необязательно писать стихи, нужно только начать читать их перед публикой. Главное, сказал он, это заручиться согласием самых важных поэтов на выступление, и поэтому гораздо умнее, сказал он, вместо того, чтобы тратить время на писание стихов, сразу приступить к главному – к результату, так что, сказал длинноволосый поэт, думай о согласии главных, это самая сложная и самая важная часть жизни поэта, всё остальное не так важно.

– Так что же для этого нужно делать? – спросил молодой человек.

– Я научу тебя, – сказал длинноволосый поэт. – Как я уже говорил, все, что нужно, чтобы стать поэтом, – это как можно чаще выступать перед публикой, – «делать презентацию», как говорят у нас городе, а всё что нужно для того, чтобы получить разрешение на презентацию – это поклониться главным поэтам. Этого вполне достаточно, чтобы быть поэтом. Просто глубоко, до земли поклонись главному поэту, когда ты в поле его зрения. Теперь, молодой человек, ты знаешь секрет поэзии, благодаря которому ты станешь лучшим молодым поэтом своего поколения!»

Молодой человек всё сделал так, как ему сказал длинноволосый поэт, и менее, чем через две недели ему было дано разрешение провести собственное выступление в «Кабаре поэтов», и он понял, что его учитель был прав во всем, включая тот малоизвестный факт, что вовсе не было необходимости приносить с собой пачки стихов: молодой человек просто говорил гласные в микрофон, растягивая их, чтобы они казались необычными: aaa, ooo, ууу, эээ … Аудитория полюбила авангардную поэзию молодого человека; седовласые редакторы респектабельных публикаций подходили к молодому человеку во время антракта с предложениями опубликовать его необычные стихи; девушки приносили ему букеты гвоздик и норовились поцеловать его в ухо; десятки длинноволосых поэтов хотели сидеть с ним за одним столиком и вместе с ним пить через трубочку молоко из длинных бокалов. Единственное, что беспокоило молодого человека было странное существо непонятного пола, слишком необ’ятное, чтобы быть девушкой и слишком круглое, чтобы быть юношей, существо сидящее в специальном кресле, на специальном балкончике, надо всеми столиками с поэтами, и каждый раз, когда молодой человек выступал со своими гласными и аудитория хлопали и кричала «браво!», круглое существо громко и внятно говорило: «Мне нравится мисс Золушка, потому что она хорошая. Мне нравится мисс Золушка. Она хорошая». И так по многу раз за вечер… И только когда круглое существо спало, чувства существа к мисс Золушке оставались невыраженными вслух и от этого всем становилось немного легче.

– Почему никто не может заставить его помолчать во время моих выступлений? – не раз спрашивал молодой человек, который уже был не просто молодым человеком, а известным поэтом.

– А ты не знаешь, кто это? – сказал один из длинноволосых поэтов, сидящих за столиком молодого человека, который уже был не просто молодым человеком, а известным поэтом.

– Нет, – сказал молодой человек. – Так что же это существо?

– Это самый главный поэт, главнее всех главных поэтов, – сказал длинноволосый поэт, поднося очередной бокал вина к губам. – Без его одобрения никто, и я имею в виду – никто в мире, не может получить высшую награду, Мобелевскую премию, ежегодно вручаемую Всемирной Академией лучшему поэту года. Премия, конечно, не только премия, но и миллион долларов.

В этот момент молодой человек, который уже был не просто молодым человеком, а известным поэтом, пожалел о том, что он не только не обращал внимания на круглое существо, а ещё и шикал на него, когда существо озвучивало свои чувства к Мисс Золушке во время выступлений молодого человека, который уже был не просто молодым человеком, а известным поэтом. Откуда ему было знать, что существо было самым главным поэтом всех главных поэтов? И что самый главный ежегодный приз поэзии зависит от прихоти этого круглого существа? Отныне молодой человек, который был теперь знаменитым поэтом, глубоко кланялся каждый раз, когда проходил под балкончиком, на котором восседало круглое существо, но, поскольку между ними был этот непрозрачный балкончик и поскольку существо было _над_ кланяющимся молодым человеком, глубокие поклоны молодого человека были напрасны, так как физически невозможно поклониться тому, что находится над вами, и вот почему существо не смогло оценить попытки молодого человека заставить существо забыть про прежнее неуважительное отношение молодого человека к существу, и существо продолжало бормотать что-то непонятное про «Мисс Золушку» во время выступлений молодого человека, который был теперь не просто молодым человеком, а знаменитым поэтом, и само собой разумеется, что Мобелевская премия так и не была присуждена молодому человеку, который был теперь не просто молодым человеком, а знаменитым поэтом.

 

This image, representing NL, is a black silhouette profile on a white ground, the neck long and slender, the hair held back in a thick bun.

NL Herzenberg lives in New York and often translates Nina Kossman’s Russian work into English.  The author sees NL Herzenberg as her alter ego which makes NL Herzenberg the perfect translator of her Russian work.

 

Nina is shown, before the walls of a dark room. Nina has pale skin, and light reddish brown or grey hair. Nina wears a black shirt or blouse. A series of small red, yellow, and blue lights are visible behind Nina's left shoulder.

Moscow born, Nina Kossman is a painter, writer, poet, and playwright. Among her published works are two books of poems in Russian, two collections of short stories, and an anthology published by Oxford University Press. She received a UNESCO/PEN Short Story Award, an NEA fellowship, and grants from Foundation for Hellenic Culture, the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, and Fundación Valparaíso. She lives in New York.

 

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 BACK TO FOLIO

Christian Brady translates Titus Lucretius

Selections from De Rerum Natura, The Nature of Things, Book V

EDEN (V. 772 – 877)

This remains:                since throughout the cerulean places of the great world
I have unraveled with reason                 those things which come to be whatever
can so that the varied courses of the sun                     meanderings of the moon
we can know                   what force and cause summons
how they can: perish like stars six feet under                               their light
blocked shadows cover              the unsuspecting lands
just as when they squint their eyes                       now the aperture opens
inspect all places                          bright with brilliant light
now I return to the novelty of the world                           the soft fields   
of earth what in the next litter they had in mind                          at first to
raise to the shores of light         to commit to the uncertain winds

In the beginning                           the family of grasses and green splendor
earth gave around the hills                       through all fields
meadows flickered                        in bloom greening
a great contest                               was given to the trees
to grow through the breezes                   reins loose
just as now feathers                      and first hairs and bristles are
created for limbs of four-leggers                        the frame of
able-winged
then the new earth                        first raised the grasses bushes
next created                     the mortal generations
many things arose in many ways                            with their own
philosophies couldn’t: animals fell out of the sky
land-lubbers sprung                 from salty lagoons
true: the earth earned the name   
Mother since from the earth     she created all
even now animals mushroom                  from rain-swept
lands curdle      in the sun’s humidity
no less shocking                           if greater more fertile things arose
made adult by a new                   world and sky

In the beginning the family of wings                 a medley of things in flight
left their eggs                 hatched by springtime
just as now cicadas                      abandon their smooth
cocoons instinctively pursuing                           food and life
then the earth gave to you                        the mortal
generations heat and moisture the victors of ploughland
when some place offered itself                            a suitable region
wombs grew                fixed to the earth with roots
when time                dilated them full
infant fish lungs                       fled seeking the air
nature translated                     the earth’s openings
turned them                like horses ships moonpaths

forced sap in her open veins                  to flow
very much like milk just as now                        a woman
after she’s pregnant                   stores within herself sweet
milk which every impulse to feed                     translates to her
breasts the earth           food for boys mist clothing grass a bed
she gave many things                overflowing with soft stubble
like that of a young man’s                       first beard
the novel world was not used to summoning.     harsh cold spells
too long droughts                      winds of great might
all things grow equally                           take their strength at the same time   

The earth earned the name Mother              she made the family
of man and flooded the great mountains                     with every lunatic
animal she filled the sky           with wings
since everything should have an end            for fruitfulness
she stopped just like                  a woman tired in old age
time changes the nature of                     the whole world
one state should take all its parts                       from the last
nor should any thing remain similar to itself                 all things leave return
nature changes all things                           forces them to
shift something rots weak       grows tired with age
something grows up from under                       escapes from hated
circumstances time changes the nature          of the whole world
one state takes all its parts from                        the last
its bears what it could not before                      could bear what it has not before

Many were the miracles                        the world tried to
make every face and limb       a wonder:
a woman who’s a man not in between                              or both far
from either some animals missing their feet     some blind
some with all their limbs                                   tangled tucked into their bodies   
they couldn’t: do anything                                 go
anywhere avoid evil               take what they needed
nature reaped them                             the great pruner
they couldn’t: touch the bloom                                        of old age longed
for find food join in the              (austere and lonely) offices of love
for we see many things must happen just                      right in many ways
so that through children we might                     forge a legacy   
first: food then: that fluid starting point                         hidden away like fire in flint
which drips from our arching frames                like sweat blood honey
a woman can be joined with another                  they possess shared bliss
who exchange it between one another

Back then the mass destruction of many generations                              of the living was
unavoidable since they could not through children                                   forge a legacy
everything you see                      feeding on the living air
is there either by lying or courage                       or speed
from the very beginning                          each one his brother’s keeper
many are here pledged to us                   entrusted to our protection by their utility
in the beginning                        the fierce family of lions savage
generations courage protected lying foxes and flight deer
but the light sleeping minds                  of loyal-hearted dogs
every race born of                          pack animal lineage
wool-bearing flocks                       horned herds
all these were pledged                                 to the protection of
mankind eagerly fled    beasts sought peace
multiplied with scarce food                       great labor
things we gave as prizes                             for the sake of their usefulness
those for whom nature                               allotted nothing
who were unable on their own                                to live or to prove to
us any usefulness                        why we should suffer
their family to be fed by our protection                            to be
safe surely these lay as prizes                 profit for others
every one trammeled                by mortal chains
until nature reduced that family                       to extinction

THE MYTH OF YESTERDAY (V. 925 – 1010)    

But that kind of man in the fields                     before was
hardier than you’d expect                      because the hard earth crafted
them with larger          more powerful bones within
built fitted with strong                          muscles in their
flesh the sort not easily             caught fever or cold
not by the novelty of food                       or any bodily illness
for many solar cycles                 twisting round the sky
they traced their lives                in the manner of wide-wandering beasts
no strong someone was                            the tamer of the curved plough

no one knew how:                        to soften the earth with
metal to bury young plants       into the earth up above
to cut down old tree branches with shears                      like my grandfather
because the sun and rain had given                     because the earth had crafted
on her own a gift that                  used to soothe hearts enough
many used to preen one another                           among the acorn-bearing oaks
those arbutes you see now                        in wintertime

growing ripe                       scarlet
then the earth bore                         even more abundantly
heavier so the blooming                newness of the world
gave way too much hardy fare                                                fitting for 
wretched mortals but rivers and fountains were                           calling out          to 
settle thirst just as now waterfalls                                         from great mountains
brightly invoke                              the thirsty clans of beasts
then they made footholds                          in wooded regions of nymphs known
from wanderings                                          where they knew flowing water
washed the slippery wet rocks                               overflowing beyond the brim
wet rocks dripping from above                              from green moss some
which gushes in the floodplains                                            some breaks forth into the fields

Things they did not know:            how to wield fire how to use
pelts how to clothe their bodies                 in the corpses of beasts
made their homes in groves          and mountain caves and woods
buried their dirty bodies                 among the apple trees
driven by the rain                avoiding the pounding wind
how to see the common good          know
customs                            or use laws
each one took                                only what chance gave
learned to live                                on her own

in the woods Love                         joined the bodies of lovers
arranged them either by                           mutual consent
or the violence of the man                        his destructive want
or an exchange: acorns                              strawberries pears

Depending as one does                                on youth friends intelligence sword
they depend on the wonderful virtue                    of their hands and feet
pursuing                          the woodland clans of beasts
with stone slings                           the heavy weight of a club
they vanquished                            many vanished from some in hiding places
caught by the night                      they gave their naked woodland limbs 
like bristling boars                        to the ground
nesting themselves with leaves                           branches
never sought in nightshade                       palewandering
daylight the sun in the fields                     no great cry
but silently they waited                              buried in dream
while the rosy firebrand sun                     raised his eyes to the sky

Ever since they were little                          they saw
sunrise nightfall                              one after the other
never                 miraculous
they did not fear                              everlasting night
more of a consideration than light were                            the clans of beasts
making sleep                   so often hostile to those insomniacs
thrown from their homes they                              fled their stone roofs
at the arrival of a boar or a strong lion                              foaming like a rip curl
they yielded in the dead of night                           their beds
laid with branches                      shivering at their savage guests

Not too much more then                         than now were the mortal
generations departing the sweet lights          of life with tears
when one of them                         was caught 
she provided a still squirming                                meal for beasts slurped through teeth groves and mountains and woods she                                filled with shrieking
seeing living flesh                       buried in a living tomb
and those who saved themselves from                            digestion
holding their trembling hands                               over filthy gashes
begged in terrible tones                            for death
while ulcers robbed them of a savage                                 life
deprived of assistance                            not knowing what their wounds want
not yet               were thousands of boys sent over there
Baghdad Fallujah Mosul Sadr City
now Sarmada Raqqa Palmyra al-Bab Ildib
to their Dunkirks their Cannaes their Birnam Woods
their Children’s Crusade
not yet was one day giving them to destruction                         nor was the mutinous
seaskin dashing the ships                       against the rocks and men
by chance no purpose uselessly                            the sea rose often
raging—like panthers enraged birds                  like lunatic poison
coursing through the veins                    like winds like love—
lightly placing empty threats                as a high roller places
bets the quiet sea’s charm         could not charm anyone
into a costly mistake while                      the waves snickered
the wicked skill of sailing                         lay secret still
then the scarcity of food                          gave weary limbs to death
while now we are drowned in                             an abundance of stuff
those who once poisoned themselves                             unknowingly now
turn their venom on others                   with skill   

ALPHABETA TESTING (1011 – 1090)

After they obtained homes                     and pelts and fire
and women joined to partners                            yielded to one…
(much is to be desired here                                  some clarification on the
hegemony of the union the battles won and lost                     sex is in between the
lines) knew how to see their legacy                    created from themselves
at which point hardy mankind                             began to soften
they cared for their hearths                      since not even now
can they bear the cold on their chilly bodies                    under the vault of heaven
Venus shrunk their strength                 children
easily shattered their parents’ proud                 dispositions with their
cuteness then willing neighbors           began to form friendships
not to harm or                               to be harmed   
they entrusted children and womankind                       into their care
with words and gestures                         they stutteringly signify
that it is right to respect all those                         who are vulnerable
not in every way could                              harmony come to be
a good and great part of humankind                   kept their promises
unbroken might have been destroyed already then
might not have forged a legacy                           through children

Nature forced the varied                         sounds of tongue
to broadcast their usefulness                 minted the names of things
lack of language                             draws boys and girls to gestures
forces them pointing to show                 what’s standing right in front of them
each soul feels the weight                        of itself:
before a young bull’s horns                      are born on his
forehead in anger they attack rivals thrust with them
cubs of leopards                          whelps of lions
with claws and paws they play at fighting                       even then with
bites when scarcely their teeth and nails             have grown
every generation of birds                         we see
trusts in their wings                     seeks featherquaking aid   
but it is ridiculous to then                      extrapolate that somebody
has distributed all the names to things                             taught all
men vocabulary                from the start

Why was this man                         above all others able
to trademark the diverse sounds of language                   to broadcast his voice
and at the same time others are not considered                             able to have done this?
if others did not also                    use their voices
among themselves before                           from where was knowledge of this usefulness
sown like seeds buried like a treasure chest                     from where was the first power given
so that they could know and see in their mind’s eye                                  what they wanted to do
just so one man was not able to force many                 to master the vanquished   

so that they would want to learn                          the names of things
to teach with any logic                               to tell the wind
what work must be done is no easy task                           for they could not allow
they would not bear too long                 for any reason
indecipherable noises of voice                             to thump their ears
uselessly what would be so surprising              in this matter
if the human race in whom                     voice and language
thrives should mark experiences           with diverse sounds
each according to                        a different feeling?
just as the mute flocks                             the generations of beasts
are accustomed to summon                   sounds different and mutable   
when they are afraid or aggrieved                       or when they
swell like firestorms or waves                with joy
surely it’s possible to understand this phenomenon                after some examples

When provoked the soft                           wide mouths
of Molossian hounds growl                      baring hard teeth
their throats tuned far from any other sound                  as they threaten
enraged they howl           fill the world with their voice
or when they try to lick their pups                      with cooing language
toss them                         attacking with their paws and nips
play at devouring gently                            their lips drawn back
fawn over them with another agreement of sound                     yelping   
or when abandoned in the house                          they whine or
crying their downcast bodies                avoid their master’s heavy
hand it seems not so different               from whinnies
when among mares                    one colt of flowering youth
rages struck by the spurs                         of wing-bearing Desire
gives out a neigh to arms                          from flared nostrils
and when elsewise his limbs                    are struck he
whinnies finally                                           the race of flight and wings
vultures                            bone breakers divers
hunting for food and life                           in the waves of the salt sea   
let forth                             certain sounds at certain times
when they vie for food                                when their food fights back
at times they change their hoarse-sounding songs                       as
one in storms                   just as the long lived generations of crows
and murders of ravens                               when they are said to invoke wet weather
rain to call winds          breezes
even if different emotions                          act upon animals
although they are senseless                       they give voice to different sounds
how much more likely is it                          for mortal men to have been able
to designate                    different sounds for different feelings   

CB is shown, before a heavy, dark wooden door set in a white wall. CB has dark hair parted at the side, and a very short dark beard and mustache. CB wears roundrimmed eyeglasses, a grey jacket with notched lapels, a white collared shirt, and a dark grey or black necktie. CB is blowing a sizeable bubble of silver or white chewing gum.

CB Brady is a writer and translator from Hawaii, based in the Bay Area. He writes poetry about dead things, especially languages. He produced a limited-run podcast about the crossroads of classical and American pop culture. He writes for CBR about comics and movies.

 

Detail from an engraving of a bust of Lucretius; Lucretius has curly hair and beard, thin eyebrows, and large almondshape eyes, in which the pupils are only slightly visible.

An early Christian scholar from the 4th c. CE writes of Lucretius’s life as such: “94 BCE … The poet Titus Lucretius is born. He was later driven mad by a love philtre and, having composed between bouts of insanity several books (which Cicero afterwards corrected), committed suicide at the age of 44.”

 

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Gaby Bedetti and Don Boes translate Henri Meschonnic

every day I you

every day I you
the words are short or long
but all mingle to make
us tellers
of our story a sentence
that grows us and verbs us
so that everything moves and takes us
our language is
ahead of us
because it only comes to hear us
that’s why we don’t sleep much
and our words sleep far less

 

c’est tous les jours que je toi

les mots sont courts ou s’allongent
mais tous se mêlent pour faire
de nous des récitants
de notre récit une phrase
qui nous dérive et nous verbe
tellement tout bouge et nous prend
que notre langage est
en avant de nous
car il ne vient que d’entendre
c’est pourquoi nous dormons peu
et nos mots bien moins que nous

from Jamais et un jour (Never and a Day),Dominique Bedou, 1986.

 

I was told about an end of the world where the trees bend

I was told about an end of the world where the trees bend
under the weight of butterflies
when they arrive to breed 
a single species
only there
here surrounded by the shouts the beats of a night club
that place I have never seen replaces
the tables with vases containing plastic flowers 
because the nowhere of desire
now dwells in the middle of the café among 
the faces
the butterfly tree

 

on m’a parlé d’un bout du monde où les arbres se courbent

on m’a parlé d’un bout du monde où les arbres se courbent
sous le poids des papillons
quand ils viennent s’y reproduire
une seule espèce
seulement là
ici dans les cris les coups d’un bar de nuit 
ce lieu que je n’ai jamais vu prend la place 
des tables des verres des plantes en plastique 
car le nulle part du désir
met maintenant au milieu du café au milieu 
des visages
l’arbre à papillons

from Nous le passage (We the Passage), Verdier, 1990

 

Translator’s Note:

The translations are the result of a collaboration between a poet (Don Boes) and a translator (Gaby Bedetti). Our project has been to translate a few poems from each of Meschonnic’s nineteen collections for a Selected Poems of Henri Meschonnic. We chose this sampling from that manuscript to represent the richness, range, and intensity of his poetic output in his nineteen collections.

Previously, six poems from Voyageurs de la voix (Voyagers of the Voice) were translated in “Jewish Poets of France,” Shirim: A Jewish Poetry Journal, vol. 7, no. 2, Oct. 1988. Our translations seem to be the first English translation since then of Meschonnic’s stripped down voice. As with the poems of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jacques Réda, the rhythm of Meschonnic’s poems exposes the subject. He follows Montaigne’s practice—“I do not describe being. I describe the passage… from minute to minute.” Meschonnic’s poems follow Montaigne—“I do not describe being. I describe the passage… from minute to minute.” Untitled and unpunctuated, his poems are kin to W. S. Merwin “climbing out of myself/ all my life.” Meschonnic writes, “I am not in what/ I seek but in what escapes me.” 

Our challenge as translators was to capture the continuous movement of the poems, a movement that suggests the possibility of passing energia from subject to subject, of inventing within language new ways of being with oneself, others, and the world. Replicating this movement in English texts was difficult. We could hear and feel the rhythm of the French. And, we thought, Meschonnic’s minimal vocabulary and relative lack of poetic features, such as images and metaphors (his poems are nearly adjective-free), suggested somewhat of a clear path from French to English. However, we soon realized his rhythms and condensed language was in the service of mapping voices, not poems.  His use of enjambment and only the most colloquial verbs and nouns made us take a hard look at individual words (no matter their simplicity) and therefore, the world. In translating these poems, we became, like Meschonnic, that accomplished innovator, “patients of life.”   

 

Gabriella is shown, before a body of silvergrey water. Gabriella has light skin, shoulderlength grey hair, and dark eyebrows. Gabriella wears oval eyeglasses, a darkgreen or drab coat with a wide collar, and a black shallow scoopneck shirt beneath.

Gabriella Bedetti studied translation at the University of Iowa and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her translations of Meschonnic’s essays and other writings have appeared in New Literary History, Critical Inquiry, and Diacritics. Meschonnic was a guest of the MLA at her roundtable with Ralph Cohen and Susan Stewart.

Don is shown before a weathered grey wooden wall or slat fence. Don has pale skin and short grey hair, receding from the forehead. Don wears rectangular eyeglasses, and a white crewneck shirt.

Don Boes is the author of Good Luck With That, Railroad Crossing, and The Eighth Continent, selected by A. R. Ammons for the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Louisville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, CutBank, Zone 3, Southern Indiana Review, and The Cincinnati Review.

Henri is shown, before a beige or white wall with black decorations. Henri has light skin, and silver hair which puffs out at the sides considerably, but has receded entirely from the crown of the head. Henri wears a white collared shirt, the top button unfastened.

Henri Meschonnic (1932–2009) is a key figure of French “new poetics,” best known worldwide for his translations from the Old Testament and the 710-page Critique du rythme. During his long career, Meschonnic generated controversy in the literary community. His poems appear in more than a dozen languages; however, almost none of Meschonnic’s poems have been translated into English. His poetry has received prestigious awards, including the Max Jacob International Poetry Prize, the Mallarmé Prize, the Jean Arp Francophone Literature Prize, and the Guillevic-Ville de Saint-Malo Grand Prize for Poetry.

 

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Andy Fogle and Walid Abdallah translate Farouk Goweda

Gouge

Does your blood make the fool drunk? 
Do the ignorant dance on your corpse? 
Does a hungry child sleep on your forehead? 

For the hungry child, 
for the dancing ignorant, 
for the drunken fool, 

this sorrow is mute in witness, 
despair brains us with a length of darkness, 
and helplessness gets cruel. 

Beauty stands and does not step
as blood explodes from its two cheeks, 
and the shadow of a cry wanders the maze of sound. 

A coward eats the mother’s flesh, 
her entrails scattered
in the midst of wolves. 

O my heart and my hopelessness,
O cycle of futility where all is null,
O you who are drunk with the burning of blood,

O children homeless upon the earth—

My child, Arabism is still 
in Egypt, despite the gore, despite 
the gouging, Egypt is love. Is giving. 

*

If Egypt were not my homeland,
I would plant my heart in its soil,

take the path of love like her birds,
become a flower in a garden,

make the perfume of time a necklace,
and weave my faith between her domes.

In this world cramped in agony, 
when will we restore the soul of Egypt? 

*

Dear Egypt, dear friends, don’t leave Al Ka’ba 
to the idols of rabid money or careless lust. 
They’re not long for this world, 

and this web of light deserves better
than petty theft. It deserves better. 

God sings in us that despite sorrow
we hold to the shrine of the merciful. 

O you who are drunk with the burning of blood, 
O you who lash this land with your rubber tongue, 
There is no good in money without a look in the mirror. 

 

Your Scent Still

Even if you became a night,
a pool of shadows,
I still know your light. 

Even if I were lashed 
and twirled by khamaseen,
your scent is still my breath.

In every space I am 
a wanderer, and my heart sees
no space as home. 

There is no solace for 
this pain on the shore, 
no surge of renewal

as when a mariner 
returns to the sea, but I still 
adore the light.

 

We May Meet

Do you think the spring would return
and reanimate March into smoother days? 

O unknown lover, we too may break this separation 
and make belief of these tears. 

If the days sweep us clean, tomorrow we might meet
and the birds will flutter their blue against the sky’s.

 

Translator’s Note:

Walid and I met as part of an international educational exchange program housed by the College of Saint Rose here in Albany NY, during which Walid regularly visited my high school classroom for about three months to observe, talk, and collaborate. After teaming up for a couple of lessons on political poetry from a variety of countries, we thought it would be fun to collaborate on some translations of contemporary Egyptian poetry, which has received relatively little attention here in the U.S. Walid was particularly drawn to the work of Farouk Goweda, who is a literary giant in the Middle East. It began with one poem, sometime in mid-2014, and now we have nearly enough for a full-length collection

Because I do not speak, read, or write any Arabic, Walid is responsible for the most important step in our translation process: the initial renderings of Goweda’s work into English. Parts of those initial translations need, in my view, very little or no editing or re-casting into poetic American English. I take the parts that do need reworking and edit for simple correctness, clarity, and suggestiveness. Sometimes I move lines around a bit out of their original order to emphasize or re-establish certain images or progressions. I often follow up with Walid on questions about intent, clarity of meanings, allusions, historical figures, cultural symbols, as well as shifts in tone, tense, and perspective. I always send him final drafts for approval. 

I take occasional liberties with certain images or colloquialisms, but line and stanza breaks are the most consistent departures from Goweda’s poems; in fact, I do not think any of the poems we’ve published actually follow Goweda’s original lineation or stanza structures. I have approached those features searching only for a combination of line and stanza that both contains and propels the rhythm, power, and image-laden lyricism of Goweda’s work. I am fond of either uniform or alternating stanza lengths, with a small range of syllables per line (5-8 seems to be my preference), but I let lines’ content drive their shaping more than my own formal inclinations, so some poems have had small syllabic ranges, whereas others stretch and sprawl similar to those of Whitman or Ginsberg. Still others have a kind of hybrid syllabic/free verse where the line’s integrity is determined by any combination of image, breath, or music. 

In terms of content, Goweda is especially well-known for his political, religious, and love poetry. At times, those lines blur or braid. Part of what has kept me so fascinated with Goweda is how his work is by turns unabashedly romantic, pseudo-surrealist, politically strident, and deeply spiritual, sometimes in the same poem. Of the three poems included here, “Gouge” is clearly the most political, with “Your Scent Still” and “We May Meet” falling neatly into the love category, one thing that binds them—and much of Goweda’s poetry—is a devotion to hope, regardless of circumstance. “[D]espite the gore, despite / the gouging,” his lyric voice serves to witness horror and still say “yes” to beauty, love, and faith.

 

Walid is shown before a wall of carved marble or sandstone with foliage and a half-height cast iron fence below Walid is shown standing at full-height. Walid has light to medium toned skin and little visible hair. Walid wears a dark navy or black suit and black shoes, with a pale collared shirt and pale necktie beneath.

Walid Abdallah is an Egyptian poet and author whose books include Shout of Silence, Escape to the Realm of Imagination, My Heart-Oasis, and Male Domination and Female Emancipation. He has been a visiting professor of English language and literature in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and the United States. His prize-winning co-translations with Andy Fogle of Farouk Goweda’s poetry have previously appeared in Image, RHINO, Reunion: Dallas Review, and Los Angeles Review

Andy is shown before russet foliage, a bare tree, water, and sky bright sky. Andy has light skin, a thick grey goatee, and a shorter grey mustache. Andy wears rectangular eyeglasses, a red felt cap over a brimmed cap, and a khaki or olive drab stand collar jacket.

Andy Fogle has six chapbooks of poetry and a full-length called Across from Now (Grayson Books). Other poems, a variety of nonfiction, and co-translations with Walid Abdallah of Egyptian writer Farouk Goweda have appeared in Blackbird, Best New Poets 2018, Gargoyle, Image, Parks and Points, and elsewhere. He was born in Norfolk, grew up in Virginia Beach, and lived for 11 years in the DC area, and now lives in upstate NY, teaching high school and working on a PhD in Education. 

Farouk is shown before a cardinal red curtain, standing at a podium which supports two microphones. Farid has light brown skin and short white hair. Farid wears a heavy black suit with notch lapels, with a white collared shirt beneath, and a thick red necktie of the same cardinal hue as the curtains.

Farouk Goweda is a bestselling Egyptian poet, journalist, and playwright whose nearly 50 books have been widely influential in the Middle East for their technique and content. His work has been translated into English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Persian, and he has been awarded several national and international prizes.

 

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Claire Eder and Marie Moulin-Salles translate Marie Claire Bancquart

To All of You

I’m speaking to these faces underneath yours
churches that line you
identifying
region grasses and people
by the holes of the eyes.

Tempting to de-face you
and grasp by thumb and forefinger
the shallows of unknown.

What to say
to tally your long lives?

To summon the leaves
through them?

You are difficult like the face of God.

 

Ys

                The harbor was barred. Under the sun rotted the sap of waiting fruit. There were
thresholds, nearly black, haunted by mint and oregano. A spring was visible under the sea.
                 It was in the island’s immobility that everything took place.
                 The riddle was posed by an old man, whelk seller. The answer would have been
homegrown. Everything disappeared in a large epiphany of waves.
                 The town remained, walled harbor, scents, at twenty meters underwater.

 

Sickness

Body with ancient trails
retrod in every advent of pain
source after source.

Our floating island
intimate, at least, with the circuits of its existence
does not want to believe:

tomorrow the itinerary will be cancelled?
A flesh stuck in the sand
then salted with the salt of the void?

And so every wound is sweet
as proof
of this path known since the blood-dark.

We tell ourselves:
Until the death of the soul
I have my whole death in front of me.

 

Translator’s Note:

What persists? What do we have in common? The collective memory of words. Languages are different keys to the same room.

Marie-Claire Bancquart is obsessed with legends and ancient religions, which through her poetry feel eerily indistinguishable from the present (see “Ys” from this selection). On the other hand, her poems often veer into prophecy, describing the contours of an afterlife or even a second coming with a startling matter-of-factness. Or, similarly terrifying: she explores death as the ultimate finality, where consciousness, time, and sensation have no more sway over us and we join the company of objects (see “Sickness”). 

These poems come from the first section of her collection Opéra des limites (José Corti, 1988), which is titled “Leçon des choses” or “Object Lesson,” and I believe Bancquart would like us to consider the experience (or non-experience) of being inanimate—as a child, Bancquart suffered from a bone disease that left her immobilized for a long period of time, an experience which suffuses her work. 

In many cases, however, the comparison is made with elements of nature, particularly trees, which in Bancquart’s world must have their own sort of consciousness. How would our view of the world change if we found fellowship with a stone or an oak? How would we think about time and what would it mean to belong in this world, connected to everything around us? And then again, how can we identify and celebrate our human presence—our words, dreams, histories, ancestors, pain, loneliness? 

Bancquart’s imagery is stunning, weird in the best sense, and she does not shy away from addressing the big themes—seemingly ALL the big themes: god, death, language, the body, time, nature, history—but without cliché and without pontification. This is part of what marks her poems with a French sensibility; they are philosophical and dialectical. She uses questions frequently, and her poems often take place entirely in the conditional tense. Most of the poems from this collection are divorced from individual viewpoint. There is no one “you;” instead there is often a “we.” It shouldn’t work, to have such grand themes divorced from individual experience, but somehow she achieves it. 

 

Claire is shown before beige or white siding, and grey lowpile carpet or asphalt. Claire has pale skin and shoulderlength reddish brown hair. Claire wears a speckled dark greyblue cardigan sweater, and a cardinal red collared shirt beneath.

Claire Eder’s poems and translations have appeared in Gulf Coast, the Cincinnati Review, PANKMidwestern Gothic, and Guernica, among other publications. She holds an MFA from the University of Florida and a PhD from Ohio University. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Find her online at claireeder.com.

 

Marie is shown, beneath a sloping attic wall, at a white electronic typewriter and beside a black rotary telephone. Marie has light skin and dark hair that falls below the shoulders. Marie wears an orange shortsleeved crewneck shirt.

Marie Moulin-Salles is a French teacher and translator with 30 years’ experience.  She leads individual and group French classes for children and adults. She holds a Masters degree from Caen University, France, and an advanced Spanish degree from the University of Salamanca, Spain. Her translation work includes business documents, literary texts, simultaneous interpretation in the courtroom, voiceover projects, and live French narration with musical performance. She can be reached at marieSalles1[at]gmail.com.

Marie-Claire is shown before a wall painted with round patterns in pale hues, and decorated or inset with oblique canes of bamboo. Marie-Claire has pale skin and frizzy light brown hair. Marie-Claire wears a black or navy blouse with a white floral or foliate print.

Marie-Claire Bancquart (1932–2019) was a French poet, novelist, and literary critic. She lived in Paris and was a professor emerita of contemporary French literature at the Sorbonne. Author of over 30 collections of poetry and several novels, she was the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Prix Supervielle, the Prix Max Jacob, and the Prix Robert Ganzo. Her work is anthologized in Rituel d’emportement (2002), Toute minute est première (2019), and Terre énergumène et autres poèmes (2019). A colloquium on Bancquart’s poetry was held in Cerisy-la-Salle in 2011 and was subsequently published by éditions Peter Lang, with the title Dans le feuilletage de la terre.

 

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Matilda Colarossi translates Silvia Ferreri

Eve’s Mother

You had just turned five. Summer had just ended. 

At the time, I didn’t know that I would use the events of that day as a watershed. As a line demarking the before and the after. Between the happy life we thought we had and the hell that awaited us. In time, I understood that it was the before and the after date. The point of no return. 

It was a Saturday, and your father’s sister’s family had come to visit: your aunt, your uncle, and their little girl, who was a couple years older than you. 

They lived far away, in a town in the north. We didn’t see them often, but you and your cousin always picked up exactly where you had left off, running to your room to play. You spent hours in there without ever coming out, and I would barricade myself in that normalcy, serving green tea and organic biscuits. 

Nothing happened. We didn’t notice a thing.

All hell broke loose a few days later, when your aunt called your father, pulling him out of an important meeting to tell him that she would never, ever leave her little girl with you again if we didn’t get treatment for you first. 

She used that very word: treatment. I remember it well. We were stricken.

Treatment implied an illness. 

We discovered that during the afternoon spent in your room, you had told your cousin a secret she could never ever share with adults, a very important secret that would be your secret alone until the day you both died. She said you had told her that you were not really a girl but a boy. To prove it, you had made a hole in your panties and stuck a marker through it, that way, you said, you could pee like a boy. You were a boy, and, from that day on, you would have a boy’s name. You had paused then and said: “Alessandro. I like the name Alessandro.”

Your cousin found it funny and obviously didn’t tell anyone. Until the day a simple question betrayed her: “Mamma, can a girl become a boy and have a boy’s name?”

From there to your aunt’s hysterics was a small step. 

We took some time to reflect, your father and I, before deciding what to do.

The last thing we wanted was to take you to a psychologist. But we felt we needed help. We needed someone who would tell us what to do so we wouldn’t make mistakes, someone who would say: Take the first left, then go right. That’s the road, take it, and you’ll be fine.

First, we tried talking to you about it. We wanted to understand.

One evening while your father was putting you to bed, he asked you who Alessandro was, if he was a friend from school. If that was the case, we could invite him to the house to get to know him better, and maybe show him your toys. He realized afterwards that by asking what sounded like a trick question, he had made a mistake, but your anger was, in any case, out of proportion. You screamed that Alessandro didn’t exist, that he wasn’t anybody, and that he wasn’t your friend. And that your cousin wasn’t your friend either, that friends kept secrets, and that she didn’t know how to keep a secret. You said that you never wanted to see or hear her again. Your father tried to say he was sorry, but you pushed him away, yelling. Your face was transfigured by your fury and your tears, and you couldn’t breathe past the anger that rose in your throat. You cried and screamed until, exhausted, you fell to the floor, your face on your father’s knees, your sweaty hair dangling over his legs. And there you fell asleep.

Your tears and sweat had left you soaking wet. You didn’t even wake up when we changed your pajamas and put you to bed. 

Your father fell silently into a chair in his study: he was a ghost reflected in the screen of his lifeless computer. 

A few weeks later, we found ourselves sitting in front of a doctor who was specialized in child behavioral problems. She was about forty years old, very knowledgeable, and she worked with children your age. She didn’t say much, didn’t give us maps or strategies; she just told us to watch and wait. Without judging, trying not to use words like right, wrong, male, female. No contrapositions. She told us to just watch and to leave you alone. And to let you choose without imposing anything on you, so that your choice would be an alternative and not the result of a contraposition. 

There are children who take longer to stabilize, gender-wise. Don’t rush her and you’ll see that almost certainly everything will fall back within the norm, and she’ll realign with other girls her age. 

That ‘almost,’ however, left me with a void I didn’t want her to explain, I didn’t want to know more about.

And so, a period of extreme liberty began for you. We brought you with us to choose your clothes and often even your toys. You always went straight for the boy’s department: you chose sweat-suits, pants, hoodies. You asked us to cut your hair, and I watched it fall to the ground, lock after lock, under my hairdresser’s scissors. You said, cut more; I tried to intervene; and the hairdresser stood motionless between us, scissors in hand, and waited. He was a smart young man: I think he knew we were carrying out a transaction about something totally different. You were almost unrecognizable when you came out of there.

In kindergarten you invented a male twin. That way you could be everything without people asking you for explanations. You could be Eva, and you could be Alessandro. The other kids thought your double personality was fun. In the morning when you entered the school, they’d ask: 

“Who are you today?”

The teachers supported you and left you alone. They couldn’t explain it, but they didn’t pass judgment either. They learned not to ask me any questions. They understood that something huge was stirring inside you, and they didn’t have the courage to invade our already precarious, delicate space. They were happy to go along with your double personality and made sure the other children, especially those in the other classes, didn’t make fun of you. Your classmates had learned to love and accept you just the way you were. One day Eva, one day Alessandro. Then Alessandro more and more, and Eva less and less.

As for me, I had stopped inviting girls home to spend the afternoon with you. It was humiliating to have to call other mothers and beg them to come over with their daughters. They understood what I was trying to do, and sometimes they even played along. But you would offend them and mortify them because they were girls, and they wouldn’t come to play with you anymore. You did to them what you would have liked to do to yourself, if you had only known how. 

Slowly, your girl’s clothes, including the beautiful embroidered things your grandmother had made for you and that you had started to hate, ended up in the bags I donated to the church. In just a few months, you had changed completely, and when, much later, we signed you up for first grade, the teachers found it difficult to identify you with a girl’s name. 

You were Eva, but you didn’t look like it.

 

La madre di Eva

Avevi da poco compiuto cinque anni. Era poco dopo l’estate.

Allora, non immaginavo che avrei utilizzato gli eventi di quel giorno come spartiacque. Come linea di confine tra il prima e il dopo. Tra la vita felice che pensavamo di avere e l’inferno che ci attendeva. Lo capii col tempo che quello era stato il giorno del prima e del dopo. Il punto di non ritorno.

Era di sabato ed era venuta a trovarci la famiglia della sorella di tuo padre. Tua zia, tuo zio e la loro bambina di un paio d’anni più grande di te.

Abitavano fuori, in una città del nord. Non li vedevamo spesso ma voi bambine riprendevate in fretta la vostra confidenza e scomparivate nella tua stanza a giocare. Stavate ore lì dentro senza mettere il naso fuori e io mi barricavo dietro questa normalità servendo tè verde e biscotti biologici.

Non successe nulla. Non ci accorgemmo di nulla.

Il pandemonio scoppiò qualche giorno dopo quando tua zia chiamò tuo padre tirandolo fuori da una riunione importante per dirgli che mai e poi mai avrebbe lasciato la sua bambina in tua compagnia se prima non ti avessimo fatta curare.

Usò proprio questa parola: curare. La ricordo bene. Ci colpì.

La cura presupponeva una malattia.

Pare che nel vostro pomeriggio in camera, tu avessi confidato a tua cugina un segreto che mai avrebbe dovuto rivelare agli adulti, un segreto importantissimo che doveva restare tra voi due fino alla morte. A quanto pare, le avevi confessato di non essere una femmina ma un maschio. Per provarlo avevi fatto un piccolo buco nelle mutande e ci avevi infilato dentro un pennarello.

Così, avevi detto, anche tu facevi la pipì come i maschi. Eri un maschio e dal quel giorno avresti avuto un nome da maschio. Ci avevi pensato un po’ su e poi avevi detto: «Alessandro,
mi piace Alessandro».

Tua cugina l’aveva trovato divertente e ovviamente non ne aveva fatto parola con nessuno. Fino al giorno in cui una domanda innocente la tradì: «Mamma le femmine possono diventare maschi e chiamarsi da maschi?»

Da lì alla furia di tua zia il passo fu breve.

Ci prendemmo un tempo, io e tuo padre, per riflettere prima di decidere cosa fare.

Portarti da uno psicologo era l’ultima cosa che volevamo.

Ma sentivamo di aver bisogno di aiuto, avevamo bisogno di qualcuno che ci dicesse che cosa fare per non sbagliare. Che ci dicesse prendete la prima a destra, la seconda a sinistra. Quella è la strada, seguitela e andrà tutto bene.

Prima cercammo di parlarne con te, volevamo capire.

Una sera mentre tuo padre ti metteva a letto, ti chiese chi era Alessandro, se era un tuo amico a scuola. In caso, avremmo potuto invitarlo a casa per conoscerlo meglio e magari fargli vedere i tuoi giochi. Riconobbe dopo di aver commesso un errore facendoti una domanda che sembrava un tranello, ma la furia che ne seguì fu comunque spropositata. Urlasti che Alessandro non esisteva, che non era nessuno, che non era un tuo amico. E che non era tua amica neanche tua cugina, che gli amici mantengono i segreti e lei invece non ne era stata capace. Che non volevi più vederla né sentirla. Tuo padre provò a scusarsi ma tu lo cacciasti via urlando. Il tuo viso si era trasfigurato nella rabbia e nelle lacrime, non riuscivi più a respirare tanta era la furia che ti saliva in gola, piangevi e urlavi sempre più affannata finché crollasti esausta per la fatica col viso sulle ginocchia di tuo padre e i capelli che penzolavano sudati sulle sue gambe. E lì ti addormentasti.

Le lacrime e il sudore ti avevano lasciata fradicia. Non ti svegliasti nemmeno quando ti cambiammo il pigiama e ti mettemmo a letto.

Tuo padre si accasciò silenzioso sulla sedia del suo studio: un fantasma riflesso nello schermo del computer spento. Poche settimane dopo, ci andammo a sedere davanti a una dottoressa specializzata in disturbi dell’età infantile. Era una donna preparata, di circa quarant’anni che lavorava con i bambini della tua età. Non ci disse molto, non ci diede mappe né strategie, ci disse solo di attendere e osservare. Senza giudicare, cercando di non utilizzare parole come giusto, sbagliato, maschio, femmina. Nessuna contrapposizione. Ci disse solo di guardare e lasciarti fare. E lasciarti scegliere senza importi nulla per evitare che la scelta fosse il frutto di una contrapposizione e non di un’alternativa.

Ci sono bambini che hanno bisogno di più tempo per stabilizzarsi nel loro genere. Non mettetele fretta e vedrete che quasi certamente tutto rientrerà nella norma e lei si riallineerà con le bambine della sua età.

Quel quasi, però, mi lasciò una voragine su cui non volli chiedere spiegazioni, su cui non volli sapere di più.

Così cominciò per te un periodo di estrema libertà. Ti portavamo a sceglierti i vestiti, e spesso anche i giochi. Tu puntavi sempre i reparti da maschio, sceglievi tute, pantaloni, felpe.

Chiedesti di tagliarti i capelli e li vidi cadere sotto le forbici del mio parrucchiere ciocca dopo ciocca. Tu dicevi di più, io cercavo di intervenire, lui restava fermo nel mezzo con le forbici in mano e aspettava. Era un ragazzo molto intelligente, credo che avesse capito che stavamo facendo una trattativa su ben altro.

Uscisti da lì quasi irriconoscibile.

All’asilo t’inventasti di avere un gemello maschio. Così potevi essere tutto senza che nessuno ti chiedesse spiegazioni. Potevi essere Eva e potevi essere Alessandro. La tua doppia personalità divertiva gli altri bambini che all’ingresso, di mattina, ti chiedevano: «Oggi chi sei?»

Le maestre ti assecondavano e ti lasciavano fare. Non avevano spiegazioni ma nemmeno giudizi. Impararono a non chiedermi ragioni. Capirono che qualcosa di grande si muoveva dentro di te e non avevano coraggio di invadere il nostro equilibrio già così precario e delicato. Si accontentavano di assecondare la tua doppia personalità e far in modo che gli altri bambini, soprattutto quelli delle altre classi, non si prendessero gioco di te. I tuoi compagni, loro, avevano imparato ad amarti e ti accettavano così com’eri. Un giorno Eva, un giorno Alessandro. Poi sempre più Alessandro e sempre meno Eva.

Io, da parte mia, avevo smesso di invitare bambine a casa per farti passare il pomeriggio con delle femmine. Era umiliante per me chiamare le madri e pregarle di venire a trovarci con le figlie. Loro capivano i miei tentativi e qualche volta mi assecondarono pure. Ma tu le offendevi e le mortificavi perché erano femmine e quelle non ne volevano più sapere di venire a giocare con te. Facevi a loro quello che avresti voluto fare a te se solo avessi saputo come farlo.

Lentamente, i tuoi abiti da bambina finirono nei sacchi donati alla chiesa, compresi i meravigliosi vestiti ricamati che ti aveva fatto tua nonna e che tu avevi preso a detestare. In pochi mesi, ti eri completamente trasformata e quando, tempo dopo, t’iscrivemmo in prima elementare, le maestre fecero fatica a identificarti con un nome da femmina.

Eri Eva ma non lo sembravi.

 

Translator’s Note:

“I’m here Eva, near you. I’m sitting in this cold hallway just outside the operating room where you are lying, naked, a woman, a girl, female, for the very last time.”

These are the very first lines of the book La madre di Eva (Eva’s mother) by Silvia Ferreri; and the minute I read them I was hooked. I read the book, which is a mere 195 pages (but you wish it were longer) in a heartbeat. I couldn’t put it down.

It’s hard to say why books attract us, why they engage us, why we want to share them with everyone. Reading is personal, loving a book is personal, but thinking a book is great, is not necessarily personal: Eva’s mother is beautifully written; it is the product of research into a world few of us know; and it takes us into that world, mothers, fathers, children.

Eva is the strong child we cannot help but love; Eva’s mother is the parent we cannot help but admire and want to be, and she is every mother: “Very few of them know me by name. They simply call me the mother. As if I were an archetype, the matrix, everyone’s mother, of all the creatures, men and women who need to be carried to safer shores.” And that’s what she does, she accompanies Eva to safer shores, out of the body she was given at birth to the one Eva has always known was Alessandro. 

The book is written in a series of flashbacks, memories that retrace the protagonists’ steps as Eva’s mother sits in the cold, colorless halls of a state-of-the-art hospital in Serbia, where Eva is about to undergo gender-confirmation surgery: Eva has just turned eighteen, and this is her birthday gift to herself, for Eva was given the wrong body at birth and she refuses to live a lie.  

In the silent dialogue with her child, Eva’s mother takes us by the hand and strips us of all the things we thought we knew about gender transition: she teaches us about the pain and the frustration that comes with not recognizing the body that is reflected in the mirror; she teaches us of the senseless prejudice of others; she walks us through the difficulty of parenting, where love and fear can lead us to make huge mistakes. 

Statistics on transgender people in Italy date back to 2011, and they refer to a period that goes from 1992-2008. In that estimate Italy is said to have 424 transgender women and 125 transgender men. But if international studies set the percentage at 0.5-1.2% of the total population, there are most likely 400,000 transgender people in Italy; and this gives us an idea of how difficult the situation still is for people in Italy where some steps have been made towards guaranteeing gender equality but certainly not enough, especially socially. So this book is dedicated to all those people who do not have Eva’s strength or Eva’s family and support; and it is for all of us who no longer want anyone to have to live a lie.

I think translation is always difficult, when choosing words, when searching for solutions, but it really is most difficult when you are trying to reproduce the emotions that the original gave you and trying to be faithful to both the author and the protagonists, who deserve to be heard in a voice that is not theirs, but with emotions that are universal. 

 

Matilda is shown before a dark window and its wide lighted sill. Matilda has light skin and short grey hair. Matilda wears a knit cardigan or wrap in drab grey, and a black scoopneck shirt or blouse beneath.

Matilda Colarossi  is a Canadian literary translator and ESL teacher living in Florence. Her translations of poetry and prose (fiction and non-fiction) can be found in literary journals and online magazines such as Lunch Ticket, Asymptote Journal, Poetry International, Ilanot Review, Sakura Review, and AzonaL. Her books in translation include Fiamma by Dana Neri, and Leonardo da Vinci: Fables and Legends (MutatuM Publishing, 2018), and a forthcoming translation of Pirandello’s Excluded (Noumena Press). She manages the blog parallel texts: words reflected.

Silvia is shown, before a dark background. Silvia has light skin, and short red or auburn hair, just long enough to be pulled back behind the ears. Silvia wears a beige or offwhite collared shirt.

Silvia Ferreri, author and journalist, was born in Milan and lives in Rome with her husband and three children. She has worked for Rai Tre and Tv2000, collaborated with the journals Io donna, the newspaper Corriere della Sera, and RaiNews 24. In 2007, she published Uno virgola due. Viaggio nel paese delle culle vuote (Ediesse). She is currently a writer at Rai Radio 1: Mangiafuoco, i bassifondi della notizia. From 2009 to 2017 she managed the blog materetlabora.com in which she dealt with the lives and trials of working mothers. La madre di Eva (Eva’s mother) from Neo Edizioni is her first novel.

 

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Nora Hikari

I call this one “Not Hating Your Own Kind”

Mannequin fingers are soft if you can unwind them into realness. Plastic has a place in my household. What’s a plastic flower? Delicate and immortal all in one. I love a created thing. I love fucked-up things just a little too much just because they’re fucked-up, y’know? I love a fucked-up looking doll with a big head and broad shoulders. In the beginning we were asked to name the world. It’s the part of creation we were given. I get to say what a thing is, you know, as my birthright. I get to draw the lines.

I write my name. I write my own name, over and over, in the Book of Life. 

I call this one “letting me see myself in the mirror.” I call this one “self-honesty.” I call this one “an act of vicious rebellion.” It goes like this: I love you. I love you and I’m not afraid of saying that. I couldn’t bury your bones even if I wasn’t sobbing and I thought I could dig. I couldn’t. There’s something desperate and unkind about coveting snowflakes as they fall, in all their spindly and wavering tragedy. All of this could be gone in a second. All of this could melt in my palms but I’m sorry, I just need to hold it close to my lashes, let the crystals see my tears. This is what I mean when I say “we need each other more than we need ourselves.” 

Before there were names there was the water — the water that hadn’t been allowed to name itself. The water is old, and bitter, and wants to make us like her. The water would like to drown us one by one, it would love to seep out of our bones, where we buried her, like a child. It would love to hold us down by our throats and smother us while we thrash and thrash and apologize to our fathers. Look at me. I’m in the water with you. I’m right here. Have some of my breath; it’s why we kiss. 

 

Nora is shown on a background of shrubs flowering white. Nora has light skin, and shoulder length dark hair. Nora wears round-rimmed eyeglasses, and a black wrap jacket or gown with a white shirt beneath.

Nora Hikari is a poet, artist, and Asian-American trans lesbian based in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming at West Trestle Review, Perhappened, and Ogma Magazine, among others, and her poem “Deer-to-Fish Transition Timeline” has been nominated for the Best of the Net award. Her debut chapbook, Dead Names, is forthcoming at Another New Calligraphy. She can be found at @norabot2.0 on Instagram and at her website norahikari.com.

 

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Julie Webb

Landscapes

We razed Saguaro today,
and yesterday too.

Mature only at 35
a plant that lives
up to 175 years.

Ugly, that we.

*

I am so far away from that now.
I am in another temperature controlled room.

Just another Panera of purgatory
with roast beef that tastes like cold
and limp arugula.

Let me remind me
there was never a utopia

certainly not at the Olive Garden of Eden
despite their transubstantiating breadsticks

or a world of perfect unity
and thus: Wendy’s Apocalypse.

Some people don’t want to see
a brand name in a poem,
but this is the landscape of our lives,
even more than the trees now.

*

175 years ago: 
No Gold Rush, 
no Levi’s. No Sacramento. 
No water mining through the mountains.
No bodies underneath railroad tracks.

The Battle of the Alamo only eight years distant,
and so so so many more buffalo.

I am reminded of reminding.
I can almost tell if I will like a person
depending on how they speak of national memory.

*

The radiant orange and yellow sunset 
of a Cactus Cooler
surrounded by neon green 
and Gumby Saguaro ready to be crushed
by my fist.

What a strange way to remember something:
so easily trampled.

*

160 years ago:
It takes three weeks to cut down a giant Sequoia.
Its bark will be used for toothpicks.

*

A saw’s first job: to cut. 
A Saguaro’s first job: to live. 
One of these has purpose. The other is a tool.

Fell the Saguaro: cut down the memory. 
Memories can be too prominent. 
Life isn’t useful enough to have its own protection.

*

Something about a tree 
reminds me of not speaking.

Something about a cactus
reminds me of memory.

 

Julie is shown before grass or gorse. Julie has pale skin and light brown hair, parted and pushed back at the side. Julie wears a white wrap over a grey coat with notched lapels, all of fur or like-fur.

Julie Webb is a poet from Northern California, currently living in England. She graduated from Bowling Green State University and is the Blog Editor for Longleaf Review.

 

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Jo’Van O’Neal

Smile

“I wouldn’t leave it for nothing only a crazy man would
So, if you catch me in your city, somewhere out in your hood just say…”- Nelly

If I’m brought back in a new act as anything,
let it be some mean mugged, black lipped,

thicken mouthed man’s gold fronts. Let me
know the spoils of being in a black body 

without cessation. I want to be like Trayvon’s 
grill all gilded and gleaming, proof of our stunt 

both nuanced and ancient. In this life let me 
know the front of a nigga’s prayers. The floured 

will float to their god and go to war. And whatever
they’ve shut their eyes to envision some sort of end to 

will do that. End. Cause who could say no to gold 
dusted prayers. Every word worth something then.

In every picture you’ll know me. Don’t care 
what they say we ain’t supposed to do. We’ll eat 

together. Even when the world rather his jaw hinged
I will rip apart things in the fashion that teeth do. 

only this time in luxury

 

Jo'Van is shown, sitting before a halfheight wall of cut stone blocks. Jo'Van has dark black skin, and no hair showing. Jo'Van is wearing a pale pink dorag, denim jeans of light wash blue,  and a short-sleeved collared shirt in a floral print of warm hues, which is unbuttoned and showing a white crewneck shirt beneath.

Jo’Van O’Neal is a Black poet, content creator, and teaching artist currently based in Savannah, Georgia. He is a fellow of The Watering Hole and a Hurston/Wright Foundation workshop Alumnus. In 2018, he was an inaugural Open Mouth Readings Writing Retreat participant. His work is featured in Foundry Journal and Tahoma Literary Review.

 

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Celia Sorhaindo

[   x   ] Animated

Many years now owned by you. [   x   ] picked from close clone
family on high shop shelf of safety; bought and brought
to your lonely low home; packed up dragged across countries;
used; and now, [   x   ], a holey tri-eyed matted grey jagged 
tooth torn tired worn out case; now, just because Maggie gave
poetic exercise, you think it’s OK to come invade [   x   ]
silent protection; OK to get all up inside and colonize [   x   ]
headspace; think, speak for [   x   ]; steal [   x   ] only pot-
ent power? Your human and humane God given right, right?

But all this stretched time [   x   ] been a quiet sentinel of your life.
Since High School when [   x   ] watched you fear filled
and freaking out in science, the vitriolic H2SO4 carbon snake
experiment gone wrong, burnt [   x   ] first hole. [   x   ]
pencil pen eraser compass logged all lessons. Scribes of your life
journey in journals, they highlight highs, depressed points,
then whisper your noted secrets back to [   x   ]. [   x   ] knows all
you write, rub out, choose to forget. Silently sees and listens.

[   x   ] was background there when you discussed Popa’s Little
Box. [   x   ] bristled. [   x   ] knew what Box had felt: all 
talking about Box; forcing formed thinking into onto Box; another
powerless portal that swallows the world; takes inside what
ever is shoved in. [   x   ] knows that universal emptiness; knows all
about wishing really hard. You imagine what [   x   ] dreams
too; freedom, flight, a new skin, colour, different shape, a simple
bubble bath by candlelight…with a sentient [   y   ]; a say in
when [   x   ] is opened and closed; unguarded sleep. All eyes open
watching worried when stationery protections are plucked out
of [   x   ] safe warm womb and forced to work against their will. 

Quite happy? You think you have animated me? Last night, green
ball point told me about the lines copied from Gibran; You
and the stone are one. There is a difference only in heart-beats. You
may still remember the separated solid illusion of science. 
Quiet, you still might learn my true atomic universal lingua franca.
Listen! Let me be now. I thought I had a constitutional right
to remain silent. You go ponder more on what you read. Your heart
may beat faster than mine but whose was the most tranquil?

 

Celia is shown before green fronds of palm. Celia has medium dark skin, and black hair which is parted down the middle, and held back on either side in short a braid or bun. Celia wears a white scoop-necked blouse, and two necklaces of black cord, one bearing a silver or palegreen round pendant.

Celia A. Sorhaindo was born in The Commonwealth of Dominica. She migrated with her family to England in 1976, when she was 8 years old, returning home in 2005. Her poems have been published in several Caribbean journals, ANMLY, New Daughters of Africa Anthology, and longlisted for the UK National Poetry Competition. She is co-compiler of Home Again: Stories of Migration and Return, published by Papillote Press and her first poetry chapbook collection, Guabancex, was published in February 2020, also by Papillote Press. Celia is a Cropper Foundation Creative Writers Workshop fellow and a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow. celiasorhaindo.com

 

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