The Best Teacher Lodges An Intent Not

...when We Say We're Looking For A Spiritual Adviser, We're Really Looking For Someone To Tell Us What To Do With Our Bodies. Decisions Of The Flesh. We Forget To Learn From Pleasure As Well As Pain.

But Sometimes The World Disrobes, Slips Its Dress Off A Shoulder, Stops Time For A Beat. If We Look Up At That Moment, It's Not Due To Any Ability Of Ours To Pierce The Darkness, It's The World's Brief Bestowal. The Catastrophe Of Grace.

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.

Like Other Ghosts, She Whispers; Not For Me To Join Her, But So That, When I'm Close Enough, She Can Push Me Back Into The World.

No One Is Born Just Once. If You're Lucky, You'll Emerge Again In Someone's Arms; Or Unlucky, Wake When The Long Tail Of Terror Brushes The Inside Of Your Skull.