Just so...

Like a friend's house you can easily find

because you have often been to the house

you don't now the address or even the names of the streets

and couldn't easily tell someone how to get there



Just so, or maybe this is the opposite of what I have just described,

they have cleared our streets of débris

they have replaced our town with a child's toy version of the town

façades are theater-set façades with nothing behind them

except a backstage area where actors are milling about

they have broken into my closets and replaced the fibers of my clothing

with other, cheaply made fibers

Boxers

Boxers and Robbers

The boxer trains for his fight like a caterer for a wedding

The robbers plan their heist for weeks,

as inconspicuous as caterers in their catering vans

The boxers are graceful running down the street

They will not hit you outside of gym or ring

Even a sparring partner has little to fear

The thieves are innocuous for most, save the target of their heist

You have more to fear from the Secret Police

They have planned their heist for the night of the prize fight

This is also the night of the wedding

I write a filmscript about this scenario but the studios are not interested

Our film industry has fallen on hard times

***

It is strange to translate a poet who has been heavily influenced by one's own poetic style, as is the case with me and Mateo Del Olmo. As a consequence, I cannot learn very much from translating his work, since I find only things that I might come up anyway. Oh, well.

Mateo Del Olmo

Del Olmo's poems can be very strange:


I like the word pristine,

it makes me nostalgic

for the hayroads of tomorrow

and snowless storms

The snowroads lead nowhere,

but you already knew this

How could they in this climate?

Bad poems

My book of bad poems is done. I will send you the microsoft word file if you want to do a blurb for me, though I already have enough blurbs I guess. I could have gone on forever, but then the joke would wear thin quickly. I had to quit while it still had some freshness to it. It's 30 pages of the worst stuff you could imagine.

A first attempt

When Oscar Hammerstein III was writing the lyrics to the "Do Re Mi" song his first attempt was not as great:

Dough, some bread, I'll spend on you
Ray, my cousin Raymond's name
Mi, the State of Michigan
Fa, a nonsense syllable
Sol, the Spanish word for sun
Law, what we must all obey
Tee, on which the golf-ball sits

Which brings us back to dough

Aedh tells his beloved that her beauty is more noble than the beauty of...

Aedh tells his beloved that her beauty is more noble than the beauty of his rivals' beloveds, and that he is a better poet


I have made my songs which praise your hair

And sung of the soft way you close your eyelids.

Other women, of beauty less noble,

Do not have singers as good as me

To tell their children's children how pretty they were.

Weaknesses

My friend Bob Basil once wrote "My weaknesses define me." He said he wouldn't have a superpower, because he felt pleasure in his weaknesses, if I am remembering correctly. Without disagreeing in the slightest with this brilliant insight, I would like to offer the following twist.

We all have traits that define us, and to call some of these strengths and others weaknesses seems arbitrary. We can name the same trait with a positive spin or a negative one, like stubbornness and persistence, or dedication and fanaticism. Discipline might be the opposite of flexibility; either could be strength or weakness depending on the context. There is no way of determining what a strength or a weakness is outside of particular contexts of judgment.

So if I want you to be flexible, not rigid and unwavering, in your dealings with me, I see your rigidity as defect. If I want you to hold the line with someone else, though, your unwavering dedication is a strength.