Poem: The Translation

THE TRANSLATION (Originally titled "A Translation)

I once loved a girl with Russian Flu.
Every day I climbed her tree house,
to sit by her side and read Chekhov
in search of a cure. Neither of us
knew what the strange words meant
or if I said them right, but she would
sometimes nod weakly, her forehead
damp with candlelight, and say Now
we're getting somewhere, though we
never did before she slept. How many
nights did I climb down fearing
my pronunciation kept her ill?
How many branches hold the heart
above the belly? What noisy book is read
in the house of the heart, fruitlessly?
One morning I woke to snow, the entire
forest revised. When I got to her, she
had passed completely from translation,
even her name no longer the right word
for her. I spoke it anyway, over and again
until it sounded wrong to me, spoke it
back into noise, then left it in the woods
for storms to say.

Poem "A Translation" © 2003 Brendan Constantine.
This poem now appears in the collection
'Birthday Girl With Possum' (2011 Write Bloody Publishing)