"In Translation" by Yoni Hammer-Kossoy, Frequent Contributor & Poet of the Week

In Translation

Yoni Hammer-Kossoy

I say window and you see curtain

or think glassy sigh of sunlight.

It’s like crossing a rope bridge

while it falls plank after plank into the mist

and being left to dangle

between worlds

between languages

by a frayed end of hemp.

You say page and beach don’t rhyme, 

but I say their Hebrew echoes do. 

Oh this doubled life, blank and rewritten

one line at a time. Nothing’s so naked

as what comes before words, 

so beautifully ruined as what’s after.

Poet’s Notes:  I experience writing as a multi-layered, if almost futile act of translation: first to describe something wordless in words for myself, and then, to try and convey this image, feeling, etc. to another person. But words can be tricky, slippery, and worst of all, wrong. Add to this the challenge of negotiating different languages that people think and speak and it’s a wonder anyone ever understands another.