Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Reading Neruda

Words
are tricky.
Phrases
trickier.
Flawed translation
trickiest of all.
But I can see
round ghosts of poems
somewhere in there
slipping stealthily
amid masses
of unstrung metaphors,
fugitive pearls
from so many
broken necklaces
scooped up
piled heedlessly
in small bowls
by someone unaware
of the care
it took once
to match them.

2 comments:

ether said...

Don't know who translated the poem, Coyote...

:)

coyote said...

Too bad, Fingers! Whoever it is, they patently do much better work than the translator I'm reading (and cussing) just now....