THE EMISSARY OF AUTUMN
A Translation for Jon Fosse
Tölegen Särsenbaev: instrument-maker, blacksmith, shaman
“The tree gives a sign. I touch the tree and ask, ‘Yes or no?’”
his fiddle-like qobyz an alterego, able to transform into animals etc.
personhood is open to nonhumans
“Recompense” Särsenbaev, first-name given to children of families that have suffered
his favorite wood is acacia
everything has a double in the astral world
the sound emerges mythically—it can’t be explained with reason
Straight home through rainy darkness
called Mom, ate more, not much else—in bed now
woodpeckers, they really are so funny, they bang the bare tree with their face!
remember to turn down the thermostats before I leave
Submit Searls was my seventh-great-aunt’s name, father killed before her birth
my favorite word is acacia, everything has a double in the astral world
where everything is just the way it is here only a little different
if the wood survives the procedure, the qobyz comes to life and starts to sing
RAINY DAY
A Translation for Edie Grossman
Late autumn leaves rhyme with stripes of rust
dripping down all the round industrial concrete things.
Mountains of old tires, garbage heaps, scrap metal, substations, waste,
truth is the name we give to the choices to which we cling.
But ah, it is exciting pulling in to New York! Near-
anagram cafe Onioma; in the rain, an unusually gentle equestrian
statue, of a translator with sword: Franz Sigel;
good weather for a memorial.
John was sad, looked distant, sighed “Sometimes I
wish the Raggle-Taggle gypsies would come take me away.”
I knew the deceased not well but since the beginning, told
a little story, not as meaningful as the others’, people liked it though.
Like the pharaohs, we must have the most beautiful words
ready in our mouths so that they can accompany us
on our journey to the world of darkness.
When we go back out into the rain those are what we’ve heard.
ÄRA. “COOLING IN A GARDEN OF THE TORRID ZONE”
A Translation for Angela Fernandez and A. George Bajalia
A minimum and a bulwark
Where Atlantic and Mediterranean meet but don’t mix
Actually it was a tort case (maliciousness)
A focus on movement not in or across borders but in time while waiting
Where’s the fox in this?
I’m doing barzakh, or making − Je fais
Property that “has a fugitive nature”
Ibn Arabī’s paradox: a limit between two things but not a threshold
The outrage factor—paradoxically it’s easier for rivers than for animals, less triggering
Not a transformative stage which is then over—this is life now
They have some rights
There is no translation of “Limbo” into Arabic
The invention of painkillers in the 1820s made them think: Shouldn’t we try?
Salt wedge upstream into the Connecticut from the Sound; Camarinal Sill
“Quasi” well-defined in law, thirty examples in Black’s, dead bodies
Devotional laboriousness, the age of faulting poorly constrained in both cases
STRUCK FROM THE LIST
A Translation for Piñeiro 2012; Aïnouz 2021; Dukic and Palmer 2024
Suddenly we didn’t have much to say to each other
We finished our coffee and said goodbye
I’m hit with this anxiety to get this trip over with and go home,
To stop thinking about all this
In my moments of clarity I tend to think very clearly
You don’t need a good memory, people usually think that but it’s not true
Repeat it a couple of times and you’ll know the constructicon
You will not have to choose randomly between two with a similar meaning
(Goldberg’s Principle of No Synonymy)
Our conclusion reiterates our contention regarding the value of symbiosis
Parasitism when one benefits and the other suffers, Commensalism when
One benefits without affecting the other, Mutualism when both benefit
There are periods of loving less, doing less, being less willing to go out or share
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
Become very much focused on nothing
You decree destruction, destruction comes
