Adrienne Rich - The Art of Translation lyrics
[Adrienne Rich - The Art of Translation lyrics]
To have seen you exactly, once:
Red hair over cold cheeks
Fresh from the freeway
Your lingo, your daunting and dauntless
Eyes but then to lift toward home
Mile upon mile
Back where they'd barely heard your name
Neither as terrorist nor as genius
Would they detain you
To wing it back to my country bearing
Your war-flecked protocols
That was a mission, surely: my art's pouch
Crammed with your bristling juices
Sweet dark drops of your spirit
That streaked the pouch, the shirt I wore
And the bench on which I leaned
It's only a branch like any other
Green with the flare of life in it
And if I hold this end, you the other
That means it's broken
Broken between us, broken despite us
Broken and therefore dying
Broken by force, broken by lying
Green, with the flare of life in it
But say we're crouching on
The ground like children
Over a mess of marbles, soda caps, foil
Old foreign
Coins
The first truly precious objects rusty hooks
Glass
Say I saw the earring first but you wanted it
Then you wanted the words I'd
Found i'd give you
The earring, crushed lapis if it were
I would look long at the beach
Glass and the sharded self
Of the lightbulb long I'd look into your hand
At the obsolete copper
Profile, the cat's-eye, the lapis
Like a thief I would deny the words
Deny they ever
Existed, were spoken, or could be spoken
Like a thief I'd bury them and remember where
The trade names follow trade
The translators stopped at passport control:
Occupation: no such designation
Journalist, maybe spy?
That the books are for personal use
Only could I swear it?
That not a word of them
Is contraband how could I prove it?
Red hair over cold cheeks
Fresh from the freeway
Your lingo, your daunting and dauntless
Eyes but then to lift toward home
Mile upon mile
Back where they'd barely heard your name
Neither as terrorist nor as genius
Would they detain you
To wing it back to my country bearing
Your war-flecked protocols
That was a mission, surely: my art's pouch
Crammed with your bristling juices
Sweet dark drops of your spirit
That streaked the pouch, the shirt I wore
And the bench on which I leaned
It's only a branch like any other
Green with the flare of life in it
And if I hold this end, you the other
That means it's broken
Broken between us, broken despite us
Broken and therefore dying
Broken by force, broken by lying
Green, with the flare of life in it
But say we're crouching on
The ground like children
Over a mess of marbles, soda caps, foil
Old foreign
Coins
The first truly precious objects rusty hooks
Glass
Say I saw the earring first but you wanted it
Then you wanted the words I'd
Found i'd give you
The earring, crushed lapis if it were
I would look long at the beach
Glass and the sharded self
Of the lightbulb long I'd look into your hand
At the obsolete copper
Profile, the cat's-eye, the lapis
Like a thief I would deny the words
Deny they ever
Existed, were spoken, or could be spoken
Like a thief I'd bury them and remember where
The trade names follow trade
The translators stopped at passport control:
Occupation: no such designation
Journalist, maybe spy?
That the books are for personal use
Only could I swear it?
That not a word of them
Is contraband how could I prove it?