29 jul 2011

Great

Another poem by Gelman:
Great

What's gone is gone, pointless
to try to get it back.
The cure is late at night at the
lair's table.
Who's given knowledge
without getting wine?
The poet risks
the thousand parts he cooked
early in the morning
not letting him breathe.

This translation is not quite a free. I did try to get a Creeley vibe in the first couple of lines, but I couldn't sustain the tone.

2 comentarios:

Vance Maverick dijo...

I like it, and did pick up on the Creeleyism. I wonder about "lair's table". Does Gelman mean the table in the lair?

(Also, are we meant to think of the wine "breathing"?)

Jonathan dijo...

It's "la guarida de la mesa," the lair or den of the table. I switched it around intentionally. Guarida is used for the place an animal lives. I imagined a bar... The antecedent of the last verb, que no lo deja respirar, is kind of ambiguous. It is a singular verb, so it's not the thousand parts; maybe it's the morning. The poet cooked up some concoction in the morning, that is no suffocating him?