By HENDRI YULIUS WIJAYA
Translated By EDWARD GUNAWAN
Content warning: Some offensive slurs that appear in the source text have been carried over into the translation.
Translator’s Note
Fueled by far-right nationalist politics and religious extremism, persecution and violence from both state institutions and the general public against queer and trans Indonesians have reached unprecedented levels—mirroring similar disturbing patterns worldwide.
This month we’re honored to bring our readers an excerpt from MARY JO BANG’s new translation of Dante’s Paradiso, out soon from Graywolf Press.
From Paradiso: Canto XI
The first eighteen lines of this canto are Dante’s elaboration of human difference, his lament over the failure of some humans to realize their gifts, and an exultation for the opportunity he’s been given—which is to enter Heaven before he has died.
Thomas Aquinas’s clarification of “where they fatten up” begins at line 22 and continues without interruption until the end of the canto. In lines 124 to 126, Thomas complains that Saint Dominic’s flock, the Dominican friars, are showing signs of ambition and greed, seeking honors and offices. They are wandering away from the tenets of the order, which are to live a life of humility and self-sacrifice. In lines 137 to 139, he says, “You’ll see what has splintered the tree, / And how the remedy for that can be deduced from // ‘Where they fatten up, if they don’t lose their way.’” The tree is the Dominican order, and it has been scheggia (“splintered” or “chipped away at”) because so many of the sheep have strayed. If the monks and clergy remain true to the principles set out by Saint Dominic, they will be enriched with the “milk” of spiritual nourishment and “fatten up” the way sheep are meant to.
Throughout the Divine Comedy, Dante is concerned with the ways in which selfishness destroys the social fabric. He details how people pay for that selfishness in Hell or by having to trudge up the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory. But Dante isn’t only interested in what happens after death, he is also talking about how we live while on earth. His life was destroyed by the petty grudges of partisan politics. As an exile, he was under constant threat of death. He takes great risks in writing his poem because he hopes that by addressing the greed and megalomania that is destroying Italy, he can help put a stop to it. He also knows that this is not a time-limited problem but a timeless one, which is why he wrote the poem in the vernacular—so that, unlike poems written in literary Latin, it would change over time. He said he was also writing his poem in the vernacular so that it could be read by everyone. That is why I translated the poem into the American vernacular.
—Mary Jo Bang
while driving today to pick up groceries
I drive over the bridge where it would be
so easy to drive right off the water
a blanket to lay over my head its fevers
By ERICA DAWSON
The month is February and that means
nothing because winter in Tampa is
the same as fall and spring so it could’ve
been easily Thoreau’s “September sun”
or Eliot’s “April is” blah blah blah.
According to rule. The terrible safeguard
of the text when placed against the granite
ledge into which our industry inscribed
itself. We were prying choice from the jaws
of poverty, from the laws of poverty.
To take a liberty with lexicon
is remiss in the circumstances
of the curlew
with diminished habitat.
It reprises every day,
and the mudflats
sheeted by the in-
sweep of tide leads it to the mowed
grass in front of the Bantry
is quiet and bright along
the edges, is a beast of silence,
grips a wooden cane
where in the daylight it taps
its way among the stones
and puddles.
Out my kitchen window, no pink corridor of smoke.
Along my daughters’ walk to school, redbud trees, native to this state, also known as flamethrowers.
Five miles away, in Newark, the sky above Raymond Boulevard blooms with the discard, the abandoned, rubbish—
No, those are not the right words.
The banana plant that thrashed outside my lover’s window
seemed unreal. Our hours together felt like a dream:
how he nudged a spider up the shower tile
By RICK BAROT
| I was jump-starting the car, having asked a stranger to hook up their car to mine. I was worried about her biopsy. Then I was talking to him about his new jacket, his awful landlord, his blinding headaches. He told me about left-isolate construction in sentences. I was writing, the work of it like a pilgrim’s progress conducted on one’s knees. Because the nights were so hot, I was unable to sleep. I was laughing because he insisted on building his own bookcases, painting them cantaloupe-orange. I was helping her clear out the backyard of junk. I was with her by the river. I was thinking of him, the taste of smoke on his lips. In the dusk, he showed me the lighthouse. I was often wondering where he was, day after day, the baseball cap that had to be taken off him to lean into his face. I was listening to the small dogs barking and making noise like small kids. I myself was being brought to heel. |
Rick Barot’s most recent collection of poems is Moving the Bones. He directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.
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