The poet’s work ends. The words are fixed on the page and reconfirmed in various critical editions and special editions of collected or selected works. Anthologized. Rarely–after such publication history–does the poet return to the text to tease it into (another) shape. But the translator must always go back, back and forth from the original fixed poem to the recreated poem in a new language (a “new house of being” if you want to get Heideggerean about it), and onward toward a better, more authentic translation/interpretation. Here is my second (and always already still imperfect) draft.
Brueghel’s Two Monkeys (Draft II)
This is how the big final appears in my dreams:
two monkeys confined with chains are sitting in the window,
in the distance the sky is aflutter
and the sea is awash.I’m stammering and blundering my way
through the history of civilization.One monkey, gazing at me, listens ironically,
the other seems to be nodding off—
but when I hesitate after a question,
he nudges me along
with the stifled jangle of his chain.