Translating Poetry

Translating Poetry

Translating Poetry

Your poem translated itself so many times:
    From the incipient thoughts that brewed
    in your mind, as your mother tongue fumed
straining to come together, trying

to emerge from shapelessness
    to a semblance of shape. Re-piecing
    together the shattered mirror, remoulding
and reflecting light from unknown niches,

the poem switched tongue and its skin
as the oblique image stamped its imprint.

But the translation wasn’t quite done:
    It was fed into a computer
    to be processed, polished further,
and parts re-written, then fed again. One

strange beast of an electronic transmission
    ate the poem again, the fodder waxed
    and its shape reshaped. Then out of my fax
at night, a sheet of glazed emission

emerged, words on an unsuspecting tray:
A real poem defies translation, in every way.