Poetic Translation of Lorna Dee Cervantes' Poem

Current mood: thoughtful Mmmmmm...work is work & yes, I'm back, I just started this week...it's been mellow & I'm trying to get back to regular swing of things ...I'm taking lil' swings though, just to pace myself... So, I'm taking a bit of a break...so, my writing class is humming along & it's been excellent so far...I'm learning a lot & feel like I'm learning to "rewrite" again... So, here's one exercise - a 1st draft...I translated a poem called, "My Dinner with Your Memory" by Lorna Dee Cervantes...here's my version in my words...a lil' intense but mmmmm, I'll be frank, I've felt it before & also, it was an exercise in trying to write in someone else's frame of mind...mmmm, it maybe too that I'm hungry all the time, ha ha ha...who knows...

Just to give you a taste of what I'm trying to work on here, my teacher calls it "homo linguistic translations" - it's a deconstructionist technique where you translate works from English to English. It's the notion of coming at deciphering language purely through meaning & that language - the concrete word itself - is at the bottom of how you enter into a poem. We were suppose to fit the poem into our own rhythm & our own language...Okay, so, I'll give you her original poem & then, I'll give you my fellow workshop student's version & then you can compare both to mine...I think it's interesting how the meaning slightly changes with each poem...I don't know if you'll notice it. I know my classmate& me both used the word "pungent" to describe the cheese which was weird to both of us we would pick that word...but what the hey...

My Dinner with Your Memory by Lorna Dee Cervantes

A woman's scent is nothing
like bread, although sometimes I steam
when the moon slivers my heart
into poverty's portions. This one's
for you, though you lie, though you deserve
none of this butter. On the table between
us: a slab of meat that once tasted
cud the size of my breast, a cunning
wire to slip off some cheese, a plum
brandy that dissolves into nothing, silver
on the tongue as that talk we devour.
Who would hunger at the brink of this
feast? Who would go, uninvited,
but you and your ghost of a dog?


Aftertaste - Nancy Hom's Translation of Cervantes'
poem

Memory of you
shattered into bits and bites
of broken bread with smears of butter;
kisses greased from
slabs of meat we used to eat -
breasts, thighs and inner morsels
pungent as ripe cheese.

Plum brandy on our tongues,
now evaporated,
like the smell of you, the taste of us;
the fusion of our arms and groins.
Only memory left at the
dining table and uninvited guests
who slobber at the sight
of such abandon.

Mine:

Love & Hunger - Translation of "My Dinner with Your
Memory" by Lorna Dee Cervantes

The fresh smell of female is not
like a loaf of sweet bread.

Yet, at certain moments my mind percolates
when the dank evening sinks its long blade and hands
me perfect slices of my cut-up heart.

It's just enough for a poor man's pie.

Here is your portion, though you deserve no sweet
filling.

At suppertime, placed before us, centered en la mesa
a generous portion of steak about the weight & measure
of my chest.

A clever taut, wrought metal wire to paper-thin
the pungent cheese, liquor that dissipates into nada.

We gorge off the precious metals, we concoct alchemy
with our mouths.

How can we live on empty stomachs at the precipice of
this banquet?

Who would show-up, unannounced
Pero tu & your haunted espiritu?