I'm Naive Enough To Think That Love

The Shadow Past Is Shaped By Everything That Never Happened. Invisible, It Melts The Present Like Rain Through Karst.

Important Lessons: Look Carefully; Record What You See. Find A Way To Make Beauty Necessary; Find A Way To Make Necessity Beautiful.

Translation Is A Kind Of Transubstantiation; One Poem Becomes Another. You Can Choose Your Philosophy Of Translation Just As You Choose How To Live: The Free Adaptation That Sacrifices Detail To Meaning, The Strict Crib That Sacrifices Meaning To Exactitude. The Poet Moves From Life To Language, The Translator Moves From Language To Life; Both, Like The Immigrant, Try To Identify The Invisible, What's Between The Lines, The Mysterious Implications.

History Is The Gradual Instant

Even As A Child, Even As My Blood-past Was Drained From Me, I Understood That If I Were Strong Enough To Accept It, I Was Being Offered A Second History.