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then translate it on the spot
for me. I would copy it down,
assemble the poem, make notes,
read my rendition back to him,
he would stop me, elaborate,
we would discuss, debate, argue.
Eventually we would have
a poem.
Sepehri in Persian is
two things at once: very
plainspoken, prosaic even,
and then incredibly deeply
philosophical and abstract.
A poem about shopping for
pomegranates turns into a
poem about the impossibility
of knowing the physical world
at all. A poem about fish in a
pond turns into a reflection on
the element of water and then
on the tragedy of the separation
of human from the divine. No
one thing is another in Sepehri’s
world yet these observations
are tossed off in the most casual
language. It is hard in English
to keep up.
As we worked on “Water’s
Footfall,” the poem from which
the above line came, and then
other Sepehri poems we found
ways to render the language in
a lyrical and musical way that
matched the stark plainness
of the original language. But
I never could improve upon
the bare declaration “The rose
is my qibla” and so kept that
phrasing in our rendition.
How could we have translated
that word “qibla” without
diminishing its power in
the explanation We bet on
the fact that with increased
My Recommendations
Late into the Night: The Last
Poems of Yannis Ritsos, translated
from the Greek by Martin
McKinsey.
Why Did You Leave the Horse
Alone by Mahmoud Darwish,
translated from the Arabic by
Jeffrey Sacks.
There are, fortunately for
Western readers, a broad range
of translations of both of these
very important world poets.
Each spoke to the harrowing and
tender human condition in a way
that readers of more popularly
known Neruda or Cavafy will
much admire.
State of Exile by Cristina Peri
Rossi, translated from the
Spanish by Marilyn Buck.
Peri Rossi is not widely translated
but Buck here does a great
service with a rendering of an
early book that Peri Rossi wrote
upon her flight from the military
coup in Uruguay in 1972. When
the coup ended Peri Rossi made
a heartbreaking decision not to
return: “I did not wish to trade
one nostalgia for another.”
The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Literature in Translation
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