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Sport 40: 2012
Arse Over Tip
Arse Over Tip
European Translators’ College, Straelen
This language-fetishist retreat
in small-town Germany
has books as an ostrich has lice, a hundred and twenty thousand of
them.
The books infest the atrium. The seminar rooms. The passages.
The study bedrooms are full of them. In mine, Hungarian literature.
And French from R to Z. Their languages
tremble with desire, as Barthes, I’ve no doubt, would have said. Now
there
was someone who knew what he wanted. Or wanted to say. But what
I really
want is you. Now. Against the shelves, say, so Babits Mihály and
Ady Endre (their names are arse over
tip) come
tumbling. Sprawl on the floor. Milan’s a mild-mannered man. He’s
re-translating Joseph and his Brothers into Croatian. Back in the
dissident days
he did his time in gaol. With him
I have pleasant talks about comedy. Mischa’s a mushroom-gatherer.
They know about mushrooms in Russia. He tells me
how to distinguish something from something else. And so another
ten or fifteen precious minutes of life
pass harmlessly enough. But
what I really want
is to love you so the teeth knock in your head. The
secretaries chainsmoke in the open spaces. Irmgard
asks if emplotment means anything more
than plot or plotting. I check the passage, say no, it’s the usual
academic self-importance. Come to me, love. Come
sit on my laptop
and give back the meaning
to enter, hard return, control and shift. Come. Translate me.
Come make the word flesh. Come
come.