This Translation Tuesday, a child’s curiosity for the tactility of the world is the focus of German writer Ute von Funcke’s “Explorations.” In the author’s translation with Diane Louie and Verena Mezger, this poem—full of subtle internal rhymes and consonances—at once conveys a child’s marvelling gaze as it uses a diction that suggests the speaker’s alienation from such an innocent perspective. Read on!
Explorations
On the mother’s lap
a child
with eyes half-open
studies the index finger’s
options for flexion
bent over, erect
pushes the puffed-out cheek
pushes harder, pops
chuckling delight
moves toward the lips
in silent exploration
purposeful
exchanging skin for skin
the ego’s dress, a world of firm
boundaries and hidden movement
the man next to the child
cleans his eyeglasses
with dogged repetition
a habit, seeking comfort
or the inner friction of an
unlived force
the child pauses
follows each movement
of silent lip painting
the glass gets thinner
and thinner
the child spreads out her skirt
a lifenet for broken glass
Translated from the German by Diane Louie, Verena Mezger and Ute von Funcke
Ute von Funcke, who wrote plays for children before turning to poetry in 2004, has published five collections of poetry in German, most recently Schneisen Schlagen / Plötzlich Anders (scaneg Verlag/Munich, fall 2021), in which this poem appears. Two selections of her poems have appeared in English, translated by Stuart Friebert: Between Question & Answer (Pinyon Press, 2018) and Shadow of Shadows (Black Mountain Press, 2020).
Diane Louie‘s book of prose poems, Fractal Shores, a winner of the National Poetry Series, was awarded the 2021 John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize.
Verena Mezger, at home in both German and American culture and language, is engaged in trauma healing work through yoga and internal family systems therapy.
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