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Translations

In a used book store in France, I hold in my hands
a copy of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea,
in English, and as I leaf through it, wondering how
Hemingway might translate to French,
I discover that the previous owner was a Greek
whose marginal notes indicate words he needed to look up:
“fathoms,” “skiff,” “bait,” “oars,” “bow,” “stern,”
“whore,” “turtles,” “horny soles,” “gear” “scattering,”
and then suddenly, on page 31, they stop,
as if understanding became too much,
just as the birds are showing the old man
where the small baitfish were turning
the surface of the water white
in their panic to escape the small tuna
that was chasing them, and that would
become the old man’s bait.

Translations

How is it possible to translate anything into anything?
Every life is an approximation, bow to stern,
mere scatterings of bait fish that point us
toward some larger thing

a sign, say, like the bird that saw the white churning
and understood lunch or dinner. Hunger drives us all:
the bird, the tuna, the marlin, the old man.

Translations

How the oars of our lives row us
where we think we want to go,
how much larger our world
than the small skiff of our vocabulary.

Each day we are confronted with new translations
through which we wend our imperfect way,
page to page, --
or like the Greek who stopped on page 31,
give up,
never understanding the fish, the old man,
his dream of lions,
why he loved DiMaggio,
the Yankees of New York.

...Michael S. Glaser

First published in English Journal -- July, 2004