Herring Barrels for Women In Translation Month
Some "White words" from Dvoyre Fogel
Today, I decided I’d translate a poem. Challenged myself, really, to do a whole poem in one day. Why not? Why not a poem, on a day like today, of all days?
And because it is women in translation month, I decided to flip through a book by the poet Dvoyre Fogel, which I sought out a while ago with my friend, the poet Jonathan Dubow, after we learned about her friendship with Bruno Schulz and her commitment to avant-garde visual urban poetics. The vague hope was that Jon and I would meet semi-regularly to translate her, but life, children, teaching responsibilites, the MFA, a thousand things got in the way. Maybe we’ll return to it, but for now, you have no one to blame but me for this attempt at Fogel’s poem “Herring Barrels” which can be found in her second and I believe final poetry collection, Manikinen.
It’s a pretty literal first pass, though I took some liberties with word choice. Maybe the boldest is “vista” for “פײַסאַזשן”, more usually translated “landscape.” I will post the piece as I mean it to be seen in an image, then I will add it in an accessible version for screen-readers. Those using a screen reader, don’t worry, the visual affect is not so crucial, but it is part of Fogel’s intention, so I preserved it. The bolded letters are meant to be read as street signs, so I have done some typography to emulate that, is all.
With great affection,
Mordecai
Herring Barrels
By Dvoyre Fogel, translated by Mordecai Martin
Round as the world, round as the city
Five hooped herring barrels
In the grocery store
20 Broad Street
in five round wooden barrels
lie gray salted fat herring
50 GROSHN A PIECE 50 GROSHN
FAT HERRING
FROM YOZUA SHIMMEL
On far blue seas
New narrow ships load fish
Fish gray and velvety as an autumn day --
New ships in a blue, cool distance
Of tired steel vistas . . .
On hot seas
Of blues cobalt and ultramarine
New ships laden with pomegranates
With bananas fleshy and stuffed dates . . .
New ships of brass vistas
Where the sun is a huge metallic coal
Where in stretched out streets of gold leaf
Everything is like primeval time, essential.
Fantastic, and as if from nothing
As these old bananas. As pomegranates.
As people with loser's luck.
