I TRANSLATE POEMS

I translate poems
when I want to be different from this other me
who writes them.

When I wish I’d been born in a large city
before, during or after a breakthrough,
when I wish I’d lived in the ’40s America,
at the time of the Shah in Iran,
on the left side of the Berlin Wall
when I wish I’d been a granddaughter of a Jew
who ran to Canada,
a grandson bearing the name of an ancestor
who returned from Siberian exile,
when I want to be black, yellow, red, striped,
when I want to speak out the hardest
with the mouth of a stranger,
to express myself as easily as in English,
as noisily as in Polish,
as seamlessly as in Persian.

I translate the pain of the others
as a second-hand feeling,
with a steady hand and heartless,
as pain only interests me in theory,
as I wanted to be a doctor.

I translate when I can’t get along
with this other me who writes.

_Translated by Tatev Chakhian
unIDentical, 2016