Translations

       for Brian Friel

              I

Green hills rear up to the sky

like an animal untamed

hills where hope and fancy lie

buried like a maiden name 

catalogued and pigeonholed

with a definite position

like the eddy and the shoal

like the devious tradition 

hills with native poetry

paved and garbled by translation

ancient earthy masonry

hidden by the renovation 

till the myth, like extra weight,

is abandoned on the march

to the street sign and the gate

to the label on the larch 

to a country where the breathless

and the breathing live apart

where the tale that once was deathless

is a legend on a chart

So the map becomes the town

and the hand that used to play

marks the shape and distance down

scaling all the land away 

grinding down the mother tongue

separating blood from kin

till the songs that now are sung

smell of drink and might have been 

till each river, pond and pebble,

stream and pasture, land and field

lie imprisoned like a rebel

underneath the tyrant's heel 

              II

I sit in an Irish bar with a dark drink

surrounded by extras and understudies, friends,

and the one girl in the cast who cannot speak, 

all of them politely thinking to themselves

what I think, wondering why the actors with the names

and reputations did not bring my words alive. 

When did they give up, the words beyond them,

and simply move their mouths, making a loud

accented noise, not looking at each other ever? 

When was it when they first turned off their hearts

and all the rest became the vengeance of

the rote mechanical, connect-the-dots?   

When did the life end, and the motion start?

Like God, I offered life and they refused it,

preferring like Frankenstein to make their own. 

Now I sit here sipping a dark bitter drink

and wonder who really makes the monster failure,

is it the fault of life or those alive 

that breeds a death from rows of breathing words?

Is it the lack in us that halts the tongue

or something in the tongue that cannot speak, 

something that plays with us, like a hunting dog

tracking the thing we aim at, shoot at, kill,

only to run away, and leave us fogged  

repeating the heart of a rote speech or a song

till the words escape us, and we end the hard day

as I end this day, sitting and drinking, 

wondering what went wrong. 

                                          And then I think,

well, things go wrong--that is the way of things.

There are no other words.  Not tonight, at least. 

So I drain my drink, and stand in a cloud of smoke,

and a girl with clear tight skin falls at my feet

and gushes while I nod and laugh politely. 

Such a young thing, to be in awe of me,

whose promise hangs behind me like my shadow.

This young thing should find some words of her own, 

not borrow mine, words that she alone will taste

forever like perfection in her ear,

and never be spoken anywhere close to that 

by even the best of speakers, actors, friends,

because they will be her own kissing gifts,

heavily lying on a stranger's lip, 

heavier than the desire for bed behind

two traded tongues, heavier even than love

whose burden is to listen--or pretend to. 

And I shake this girl's hand and watch her leave,

and stumble into the tiny room where drink

is translated; and I think to myself 

that there is a kind of blessing in bad actors.

Because of them, the lines that they deliver,

the things they say that never come alive,  

are never blamed for being less than real.

The actor gets that blame; the fault is his.

Well, I'm all for that.  I'm for anything that makes 

the play look good, the words, the thought, the work.

They all survive, even when translation fails.

And though the heart, the language of the pulse 

which cries a thing unsayable in words,

seems dead, still there is life at the hard end

of this long day's work, because my words 

tonight were seeded into rows, tossed negligently

like hopeful planting in the teeth of famine

on eager fertile ground, on hopeful girls 

with clear clean skin and shining eyes, by those

like me who write and never speak their fears,

but plant a harvest in a field of ears.

 
                 III

Speaking in tongues that are and are not theirs

making their chatter kisses in the dark

dancing apart, two strangers on display

a blood red coat against a dirt brown shawl 

everything else will not be spoken of--

the hatred and the hatred in return

rote jealousy, betrayal, drunken pride--

because the unvoiced is the unbegotten 

because love is the synonym of souls

a man and woman trading pretty names

in bold misunderstood defiance of

a blood red coat against a dirt brown shawl 

 

Copyright 1995, 2015 Matthew J Wells