Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
The words
Held fast
For years
By the stones
Of my teeth
Erupted from
Bone,
Though the
Tongue may
Lash,
This cause
Was lost in
The shuddered
Breath that
Comes before
The storm of
Tears, and
Haunts what’s
Left of home.
"A bird
has never sinned. They have no need for grace,
salvation, guilt, contrition, holy words,
and make the choice instead to fill the space
above with soulless bodies, not with prayer
but song."
How is it possible to
have writers block?
I’ve been trying to
stop the words for
years. Nasty, insidious
things.
Oh I closed my mind,
but they bribed the
doorman. More like
I’m in the elevator
and words want
to talk. “How’s
yer day?”, they
ask. I’m jabbing
L, repeatedly.
Then <>
.
To every person who has shown me kindness
To every person who has injured me
I will cherish and nurture the memory of you until the flame of my life is snuffed out of existence: Equally
For you have made me, and I can only hope for better or worse I enriched the making of you as well
hand-me-down threadbare heirlooms
of common sense and stock phrases
well intentioned tools to short-circuit
critical thoughts
as if we're afraid to be asked or ask
questions we have to think about
too scared to admit we don't know
and that not knowing is default human
but even more afraid to say the clean thing -
not having time to try to find out
is what left us for dead
before we rose, zombie
What kind of lived experience is it necessary for a translator to have? Is it possible for white authors to translate Black poetry? I argue that while, certainly, lived experience is important for poetry, this does not render translators incapable simply in virtue of their social location.
