Impromptu Day 25

[spacedlaw]

Going backwards for a bit.


Nancy Chen Long challenged us to make an homophonic-interpretation of a poem written in a language we do not understand. I had to go to Pablo Neruda, of course. The interpretation/translation rendered even more challenging because , although I have never studied Spanish, it is a Latin language and my knowledge of Italian gets in the way of true homophonia. Yet sometimes, it does not.

I shall let you guess which Neruda’s poem is thus rewritten:


WALL

If nothing exists ready-made
If nothing is ever quite ready to live
I will secretly live

Do not attract me
Do not push me into this description
If you ever turn into a wall

I will secretly live

Because waves cannot hold a shadow,
Wings, or a voice (mine)
Though waves are calling for darkness
My feet cannot walk through walls
Yet when I enter the cell of my soul
I'll enter standing on both of them.

Fearing victory
Not my victory
But the long victory of sins
Ties my hands
Yet to whomever is deaf I must talk:
To see you also ties heaven.

Do not forsake me
If you do not live
If you, so sought after, my soul
If you
Has turned into a wall

All of your skin and our kisses
Will burn through my nights and days
No snow will cool my armour
And so with laughter, fever, walls, or snow
My quest will have a house in your skin
For a faithful dog
To secretly live in
Because you are the question of all questions
Unstoppable
And my armour, in your sand, becomes one with shadows
Every shadow a sin.