Le français followed by a version in English y una versión en español. There are also, appended to the English version, Some additional thoughts regarding conversation.

Among the virtues and sports of lyric poetry: concision, seeking to say a great deal in very few words. Robert Creeley’s I Know A Man is a classic example. And I have written many prose words about Emily Dickinson’s sublime Distance – is not the Realm of Fox. (The curious might visit my Translating Dickinson, Zeteo, 2014.) Meanwhile, often revision involves, above all, cutting.

(I skip over here my Ameraiku and many, many limericks, e.g. Part IV: No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals . . . )

Français

Les jours où nous ne parlons pas

Les jours où nous ne parlons pas

Je suis coincé dans ma forteresse

Ta voix me manque

Mais de quoi devrions-nous parler ?

Et ça doit être tous les jours ?

Parle-moi de n’importe quoi, parle-moi du plaisir du silence

Dis-moi que tu ne te sens jamais coincée

Que même si loin de moi tes journées sont remplies

Il n’y a pas un instant à perdre !

English

The days we don’t talk

The days we don’t talk

I’m stuck in my fortress

I miss your voice

But what should we talk about?

Every day it has to be?

Talk to me about anything at all, talk to me about the pleasure of silence

Tell me that you never feel stuck

That even so far from me your days are full

There’s not a moment to lose!

Some additional thoughts regarding conversation

There are people—not a few professors, for example—who know it all or imagine they do, which comes to the same thing. At some point in their studious youth, they miraculously—or by dint of hard work, they might say—downloaded into their brains everything there was to know about every subject of interest to them. So, should you dare propose any idea for mutual exploration, you will quickly get back The Truth already neatly packaged and put to bed. No need for further discussion.

But . . . I would propose that to have a good conversation, both parties need to feel that they still have a lot to learn, and that they might in fact learn something from the person with whom they are speaking. Or rather: it helps if both discussants feel that a conversation is its own reward. It is not what may be found (which is sure, in any case, to be superseded by future findings); the pleasure is exploring together.

I think again of Socrates, of Platonic dialogues. And another might go on from here to discuss Socrates’s limitations, and strengths, as a conversationalist. We cannot expect him to have ignored his intellectual superiority, but . . .

Español

Los días que no hablamos

Los días que no hablamos

Estoy atrapado en mi fortaleza

Extraño tu voz

¿Pero de qué deberíamos hablar?

¿Y tiene que ser todos los días?

Háblame de cualquier cosa, háblame del placer del silencio

Dime que nunca te sientes atrapada

que aunque estés tan lejos de mí, tus días están llenos

¡No hay tiempo que perder!

— Poem(s) and photograph by William Eaton.