Not Lost in Translation

Sometimes you read something, and you cannot stop thinking about it afterwards. At least for a few days. I have finished reading a collection of poems by Fernando Pessoa called, I Have More Souls Than One, translated in English by Jonathan Griffin. There were a couple of poems in it that made me wish I knew Portuguese so that I could read the original versions of those poems. When a verse reads this beautifully tragic even in a language it was not penned in, how magical it must be in a language of its birth!

With this thought making rounds in my head, I wrote this poem today:

I have heard you talk,

And I have seen

What you have seen,

But I still don’t know

You at all;

We are worlds apart,

Words-that-we-speak apart,

But may not be apart

In your art.

Maybe if I could

Walk your walk

By becoming a part of what

You do with your pen,

I may still limp,

But I might not fall anymore.

©Aaysid

Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels