so long; and the brain trips us, counting waves;
eyes, polluted with horizon, blear;
and liquefYing flesh clogs up the ears.
I don't remember how the war turned out ...
I don't remember now how old you are.
Grow, Telemachus, my son, grow big.
Only the gods know if we'll meet again.
It's years already since you were that infant
I reined the oxen in to save. If not
for Palamedes, we'd have lived together.
But maybe he was right: apart from me
you will be saved from Oedipal desires,
and, my Telemachus, have sinless dreams.
Translated from the Russian
by
Harry Thomas
RICHARD HOWARD
Writing Off
"In a field," our new laureate once said,
"I am the absence of field,"
resigned if not resolved to be missing
in action, missing in passion -
forsaking as a form of
being-there!
To live on nothing is one theorem
which Thoreau would have understood;
and not only to live on it, to let
Nothing do our living for us ...
It is the converse claim I wish to lodge,
All participation in art
is
based
on the existence
of
others.
-Hebbel
