Poetarzan by Jorge Santiago Perednik

Video of Perednik reading "Poetarzan" by Erneso Livon-Grosman.

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I read Molly Weigel's translation at the lanuch, last week, for  Shock of the Lenders and Other Poems: (1:08): MP3 

Poetarzan 

me be poet
me respect language
that be foreign to me
like own

 language, good friend

 language, companion

me no know what language is
but me love her

 language be like sun
me no know sun
know what it does to us

white man teach me read
and me discover there said:
when jungle of letters
cover jungle inside
me know poetarzan never be without jungle

with vegetation of books
catching fever poetarzan write
this sickness be relief and this relief
sickness that not let sick man cure self:
among strange things of world
one be stranger than other:
he who write of sun make other sun
world have more things worry
but things be less and less feared

difficult
for those believing fear is accident
understand perplexity of poetarzan

 me write them
"happiness of read no learn from happiness said in books"
me think
"writing dumb when reading speak
reading speak when writing dumb"

everything me write sound strange to poetarzan
foreign and own like life
like leaf

(© 2012, used by permission of Molly Weigel)