10 July 2009

Translation

Whose Order yields a world reversed?
-Roger White, The Witness of Pebbles

We wrestle with our diaries and datebooks
as though for our lives.
24 June, 25, 26, so that's the third of ...
Renaming our days in the language of divinity,
translating old gods and emperors into the script
of an untried life. Bahá, Jalál, Jamál ...
Workaday splendor? Entire weeks of beauty?
The new creation trumpets its challenge, an assault
on the everyday, every day: Rise then
unto that for which thou wast created!
But isn't that after sunset?
I don't know. Is it daylight savings time?
Damn it all!
Our halflight voices croak frustration,
not yet grown above cursing even God.
Disoriented days begin with supper now,
find their zenith in waking and prayer,
and in the overhead blaze that marks the final quarter,
we dissolve into our respective inabilities.
To my powerlessness and to Thy might.
To my poverty and to Thy wealth.
And then begin again. We, foreigners
to the very world we build, painstakingly translate
one word, one admonition, one commandment—
one day at a time. Badi, we will someday say,
overlooking the panorama of our accomplishment,
the fruits of a generation of moments
bent on metamorphosis.
Here we begin.

2 comments:

  1. Kat, I am seriously love this piece. I feel like it is something I need to study and keep coming back to. It expresses a lot of things that I feel and want to say, and haven't yet been able to relate in words.

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  2. I enjoyed your fine piece.

    It reminded me of a poem, one you probably know

    Days by Philip Larkin

    What are days for?
    Days are where we live.
    They come, they wake us
    Time and time over.
    They are to be happy in:
    Where can we live but days?

    Ah, solving that question
    Brings the priest and the doctor
    In their long coats
    Running over the fields.

    Roger

    www.pre.me.uk

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