Translations by Connor Kaplan

Translations by Connor Kaplan

Every Wednesday after school starts.

This school does not teach math or science.

This school teaches history, language,

and the culture side of my religion.

Every week I would work on

a different prayer that I would

use every time I go into

a synagogue like the days of the old.

Each letter different from our own.

Learning new words that I would soon forget.

Learning how to chant different prayers

and how to decipher the Hebrew script.

Words like ve'ahavta were taught to us

which means “and you shall love” and other words

that are not as special like daag or geer

which can mean “fish” and “chalk” respectively.

Yet the sad truth eventually comes up.

 That some of the kids don’t actually care.

There selfishness drives them to learn one thing,

how to read their portion of the torah.

So quick to grow up they are, too fast.

The promises of a celebration,

incite them to learn and the idea

of school ending brings them haste to finish.

But not me, not the few who actually

want to learn about their rare heritage.

But even though I learned what they taught us

I would never learn to translate those words.

The words that my forefathers could read/speak.

The curse of being able to read and

not translate 

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Poem of the Day: Translation

Posted: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0600

Though there's no such thing as a "self," I missed it—

the fiction of it and how I felt believing in it mildly

like a book an old love sent with an inscription

in his hand, whatever it meant,

After such knowledge, what forgiveness . . .

—the script of it like the way my self felt

learning German words by chance—Mitgefühl,

Unheimlichkeit—and the trailing off that happened

because I knew only the feelings, abstract

and international, like ghosts or connotations

lacking a grammar, a place to go:

this was the way my self felt when it started

falling apart: each piece of it clipped

from a garden vaguely remembered

by somebody unrecognizable—

such a strange bouquet that somebody sent

to nobody else, a syntax of blossoms.