Yes, I’d have to agree with Adam that the crib inserted beneath each line of original makes this harder to work with. But it’s not a simple thing to translate this poem yet again, especially considering the translations it might be compared to…
L1’s a good opener and ‘vernacular’ is a great choice. Not sure why the One and Thing need to be capped – a crazy association I guess but it kind of reminds me of Thing 1 and Thing 2… would it work just to have some-one or –thing perhaps. ‘infinitude’ seems to carry the wrong tone, of something positive such as eternity, whereas ‘endless’ carries the tone of exasperation and would seem more suited to this poem: after all, we do refer to endless bickering rather than infinite bickering so if it’s a vernacular this piece is going with, some of these lines seem to need some tighter, er, vernacularization.
S2L1 – I don’t understand ‘he’ and wonder if it shouldn’t be ‘it’, referencing the life that can't be understood. The fact that agony and enigma come straight from the original doesn’t make them any less a delicious sonic echo; what can be done to S2L3 to get around the awkward ‘being’, and ‘chance’ which doesn’t quite have the tone of the options offered in the crib? Very not keen on x2 ‘all’ in L4 but I do like babbling and how it echoes squabbling.
In S3, I seem is very uncertain compared to the crib’s certainty; can ‘deem’ be used there? L3 is awkward; and in S4, I’m not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing, though it sounds like the image should be ‘tugged at’ rather than ‘pullled by’; and the closing two lines [S4] have pretty much lost me; perhaps ‘with something’ in both instances should be ‘as though’ ?
A bit of tightening would make this come together better.
|