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Sport 40: 2012

Quod Scripsi Scripsi

Quod Scripsi Scripsi

European Translators’ College, Straelen

All these dictionaries!—in passageways, the TV room, everywhere!—
anywhere you might suddenly need to know
the something-else for something. Serbian-Icelandic,
Spanish-Croat, English-Thai, Tibetan-German. So many beautiful
flurries and blizzards and sandstorms of words. So many
weatherly ways of getting lost
in the world. So many
wuthering seductions. Lingua’s
a woman, of course. Of course she has a way
of wearing high heels for a trek through the veldt.
She says, ‘Did you bring a map?’
It’s hot. She hitches her blouse up and knots it.
Now her ice-cream starts to drip.
She sucks her thumb.
Don’t get ideas. These are just words. This is language
writing the poem on auto-Pilate. Jesting. Playing
with itself. Washing its hands. And
idling. Ticking over. Doing nothing. Thinking nothing. Finding
mischief, as it always does, for idle words to do.

What I have written the language has written for me.