translated By Sanjana Mahesh

Translated
By Sanjana Mahesh

Culture had no such thing as a self
In the moment maybe, perhaps, doubtfully indefinite although

Choices left to decide and decisions left to choice

but in the end, no explanations needed

no endpoints discussed, we know we’re pushed

dropped off

like a cliff

always reaching heights at the bottom

pay checks amount to happiness,

the more figures, the more smiles

quanitity merges into quality

the route taken by the sun

blazes through the glacial freezes to oceans paradise

unguided, like the sun, sets freedom achievable

too guided, the sense of self obeying other’s advice

always advice, never orders, saying be this, be that

never who or why, daughters and sons mean possessive

objects, shown the way, led by false dreams

How then is there still admiration

Heights pursued and mountains trekked

trenches dived and valleys rolled

Because in the end

I’m going to visit the skies

head held high in the clouds

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.