Steve Benson

it's when reading them, I just have to imagine the excited writing of the one author and its openness (streams, thickets, wrestling dogs) - that's reading - there is no right translation, just absurd efforts to make it the same in main respects - oh noble boring iconoclast! get to the country, open mouthed, chew on miles of hay! don't you know as long as you're among these people of cities you'll smoke and burn coffee? the air is cold! we hate radio. turn it off and march outside at your leisure, sooner or later you'll break that guilt, look at rooks and starlings, stop trying to crease the grass so much in your fingers, they are not machines! just eat, open your mouth, eat! my throat is in my heart, or vice versa, listening to these fast sounds burbling thickly through my morn - it feels ticklish, crybabyish, I am somehow crippled and the blood isn't running regularly -

when i read translation, i poke around the words, not at them, guessing at a reality not hinted at but encoded by some prisoner from another world— nobody's perfect; but i relish the quest for the peculiar nature of some original writer, un- known to us but through his function: images thoughts perhaps of trees cows judgings ravings— oh i'm an impotent feeling self-important fool— consume the country, become one with it, i say to myself! and becoming one with it belch and forget it! no more nervous city twisting and coiling of coffee and smokes, no more routines, schedules or lack of them! what the fuck!— i'm internally shaken by these desperate thoughts, my hand sticks in my throat, my heart weaves through its arteries, mind shorts, everywhere blood!

When I read them I'm obliged to project myself the original author's thrill writing and the expanse: trees, sky, tremendous dogs fighting: for me this is to read. There exists no best translation, however one admires the vain effort none makes to make it all the same, somehow authentic if not perfect (meanwhile sickening of the original!). Oh yucky repetitious pretensions of mind! move outside, out of sight! get your jaws wide! eat Mother Nature! Know the ways of the city drag. Contemplate a while cigarettes and boiling coffee. Dig cold air! Shut down contraptions (like radio) and ramble determinedly about — out! Time comes your guilt will crack, eyes see nameless birds, fingers play in grasses without attempt to bend and cut. Nothing is mechanical! All organic, and edible! Now mouths feel the heart, hearts are sensitive to lips, teeth and tongues, as I hear these words cascading through a difficult hour... It feels ticklish, salty in the eyes, I limp but am not limp, erratically bleeding inside.