Translations

September 29, 1995

Translations

Poetry by Rachel Trousdale

World View

There's grass outside, and wind,
each in the other; and a sky that is just
like a thousand other skies,
big and indecipherably blue.

These things are all. The more
is elsewhere, indoors, less confusing,
because you can get so lost in it you don't know where to look,
don't have to turn around and ask the grass
or wind or lack of sound the slightest question,
and death is just a pair of thick black boots
thrown anyoldhow in a corner.

Journey by Train

Looking through my reflection in the window of a train
Staring at the countryside, depending on the station I
Just left, it is green Italian hills, or the rubble-heaps surrounding
Metro-North, or the flickering of France, on the R.E.R. -
Any circumstance, it is travel, it is rumble, it is hard
To remain sitting still on Metro-North, when the children and their parents
Seem to try very hard just to cry and to whimper
Sitting still, my reflection is much stronger in the tunnels
But my eyes seem to change, getting darker on the landscape
As the sun on the hills or the flicker or the rubble
Goes from bright to bright orange down to blue, then a tunnel,
Then the darker blue past sunset, then a child starts to cry -
Till like smiths at their forges go the wheels on the rails till
A one-twenty-fifth-street or a Gare or a Pesaro arrives,
Slowing down as it approaches - every place, every platform,
Is cement, but the rest is always strange, never similar -
I think I like America, the rubble and the rumble, crying child
And the misery and all, though Italian hills are green
And in France the cars are clean, but the station where I'm going
Though it's faded and it's crowded and it's full of hungry beggars
And it's past a wall of rubble, still has starts stuck in the ceiling
And the people on the platform speak a language just as foreign
But I think I understand it, my reflection is far clearer
When reflected in the subway, when I'm stuck because Grand Central
Has a problem with the Five train and it all comes winding down.

Translations

Urbino, dawn. Late August, almost fall.
I've walked a mile with Isabelle, to board
the bus to Rome, to catch a plane to home,
and then to school, then further, who-knows-where.
The morning's chilly, bags weigh far too much.
I lean upon the walking-stick I've bought,
sent back from India to raise support
for missionaries in some awful place,
then stumble to the bench to drowse and wait.
I close my eyes, but Isabelle looks up
and comments on the color of the sky
(in English, but through French: she's Quebecoise)

We sit and wait for sunrise and the bus:
They're later than we thought they'd be. The light
is slow in dawning - are our watches wrong?
Here comes a man, he'll tell us, won't he know?
He's young and thin and dressed in dirty white,
a total stranger, after we had thought
one month in town more than enough to meet
each real inhabitant. He sidles up
and sits beside me, wary but intrigued,
and reaches for the handle of my cane.
"Che cosa fai?" I ask. He doesn't speak,
just fiddles with the stick, the cast bronze bird
that makes the handle, then, "Di dove sei?"
he asks. We say, "New York" and "Montreal."
(Connecticut's too tricky to explain.)
I try to take the stick back, but he swings
it just out of my reach. I have a flash,
a headline: Tourists Bludgeoned With a Cane
In Gory Hill-Town Tragedy - but then
I grab the thing away from him. He whines,
"lo voglio..." we ignore him, turn our backs.
He tries to grab my purse, I hold it tight,
and say in bad Italian, "Lasciarla."
He does, and runs off weeping. Isabelle
is unimpressed: "Ee's crazy, what a freek."
I am afraid - he might come back and try
to steal our bags or cross some subtle line
behind which lurks unspecified attack.
And sure enough, we see him, peering through
the modern gate made in the city walls,
his dirty clothing gleaming in the dusk.
"Ignore him," says my friend. All right, I'll try,
but when he sits beside me once again
it's hard to act as though there's nothing there,
no slightly-glowing menace by the curb.
I clutch the stick and chat with Isabelle:
would Martin ever learn to pay a bill
and wasn't Anne a little fake at times -
"Traduisci," says the man to us. We don't.
"l'est fou, lui," I tell Isabelle, my French
less fluent than her English. "Just relax,"
she says, "ee's harmless. Plenty worse at home."
"Traduisci," moans the man, his gaze fixed up,
as though the sky could tell him what we said,
the deep late-early blue write out a set
of subtitles to let him know if we
were babbling of him, or other things.
"Ee's just the local crazy," Isabelle
repeats, to comfort me. She's quite secure
and knows we'll get to Rome without a scratch.
And here's the bus - and as we grab our things
the man gets up and shuffles further off
and mutters, soft, "traduisci" one last time,
instead of "ciao" or "buon viaggio."
We board the bus, our bags stuffed in the racks,
and as the motor starts the sun appears
at last, and in the light the man's white clothes
are clearly gray, his age determinate
at twenty-nine or so. He turns away.
"Arrivederci," I try not to say.

Comprehension

The window's open. What were you saying?
It's hard to hear you through that passing train,
and somewhere there's a radio that's playing,

and children in the yard are donkey-braying
beneath a sky that's all prepared to rain.
The window's open...what were you saying?

I have to do the rounds, run, briskly praying
To find some closure here before the stain
of water sends the carpets where the playing

children are - the yard - and then who's paying
when water marks the floor, obscures the grain -
Ugh! Open windows! What were you saying?

How rivers turn to clouds, obscure and graying,
is quite beyond me. Change is never plain,
not even when it's only water playing.

And you, then! I suppose you plan on staying
throughout the storm, to potter round my brain?
The windows open? What were you saying?
Oh, never mind me, love, I'm only playing.

For James Merrill, 1926-1995

The things that hurt include a broken
phrase, a book unsigned, like salt
rubbed in the wound, a stone
that tips you back into the stream.
The missing piece is harder
to replace when puzzle-doers cross
the sea without a forwarding
address their friends can read. Forgive
me if I sound presumptuous.

The elements are harsher than
we thought. Your voice could drown
them out, but since the wind
has sounded louder for this month
or so, it seems the rains
are stronger, and the flood
is imminent without the dam
you made. Oh damn. If there had been
a little more, another word or two,
perhaps that would - pure selfishness:
you gave us what you could.

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