Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Translator

To live is to translate.

These are my horrors; cave paintings of a damned mind...

Impossible exactitude drives me on,

Endlessly rewriting the world,

To resemble some perfect original.

Normality conspires to reclaim

The oddness in these words,

To turn a carnival into a shopping centre.

Can I catch here and there a motif, a refrain

From out of the chaos?

What will foreign eyes appropriate,

What will they assimilate of this?

Find a style of being,

Such is my imperative since birth,

And the knack is not easily won.

What is my natural habitat?

I have not found it yet,

Not on these streets or in these days

Or in this country or any other.

A life spent at the borders,

Busy with espionage and contraband,

Is my calling; the world hangs

On a semi-colon.

Have I misread the situation again?

Misunderstanding is a way of life,

A way of getting by.

Too many compromises

Hedge me in my neverland,

But I press on towards the next crossroads.

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