Like Other Ghosts, She Whispers;

Reading A Poem In Translation Is Like Kissing A Woman Through A Veil.

Translation Is A Kind Of Transubstantiation; One Poem Becomes Another. You Can Choose Your Philosophy Of Translation Just As You Choose How To Live: The Free Adaptation That Sacrifices Detail To Meaning, The Strict Crib That Sacrifices Meaning To Exactitude. The Poet Moves From Life To Language, The Translator Moves From Language To Life; Both, Like The Immigrant, Try To Identify The Invisible, What's Between The Lines, The Mysterious Implications.

The Shadow-past Is Shaped By Everything That Never Happened. Invisible, It Melts The Present Like Rain Through Karst. A Biography Of Longing. It Steers Us Like Magnetism, A Spirit Torque. This Is How One Becomes Undone By A Smell, A Word, A Place, The Photo Of A Mountain Of Shoes. By Love That Closes Its Mouth Before Calling A Name.

Like Other Ghosts, She Whispers; Not For Me To Join Her, But So That, When I'm Close Enough, She Can Push Me Back Into The World.

When You Are Alone - At Sea, In The Polar Dark - An Absence Can Keep You Alive. The One You Love Maintains Your Mind. But When She's Merely Across The City, This Is An Absence That Eats You To The Bone.