Celan Translaboration

I've been making "translations" by a process of running poems through Google translate (and sometimes using an N+7-like process) then tidying up or editing the results. It's a bit I Ching-like or like Cage's writing through acrostics.

 In these translation poems, I'm using the "translate" technique to create for me a resonant pile of phrases and images (a "heap of broken images"?) which I can then shape by exploring this open field of associations which didn't derive from me. Of course (like Cage choice he sources and techniques) I made choices about what to translate and which languages to use and how long to keep translating. Then there is an awareness of the initial poem informing my decisions as well as, of course, the range of my aesthetics--what I consider "working" even if it is beyond my logical understanding.

For me, it's a way of simulating collaboration without collaborating (not that I don't collaborate a lot too.) Maybe it's "translaborating."

Here's one from Celan's poem "Flower" (I don't know who did the original translation into to English. I got the poem of PoemHunter.com.)



it’s the wind where I'm going

eyes, like night, are stones

everything black: 

we see the word

flower—a word for darkness

your eyes upon me

like summer

your heart on a wall of hearts

another word like a name for disease

the government of dawn renews