Translations as the Anti-ship of Theseus

I don't really know what translation is. It carries one thing to another place that is perhaps the same place after all. Reminds you of it. Or it carries it across a river from one bank to the other; sister places, brothers beside the river. Translation is a tricky mirror. Someone's tongue in another's mouth. 

Here are two texts about translation. The second presents E. Pauline Johnson's The Bird's Lullaby and my "translation" of it. It's a translation by reordering the words, keeping the sound, the tonality, the elements of its world. A kind of antiship of Theseus. The universe is made of the infinite juggling of finite atoms. 

The first is about translation within English. What is it that the world is possibly or impossibly Englishable? 

Let me end with a quote by the just passed Lyn Hejinian:

 Without what can a person function as the sea functions without me?

    *

I am writing this in English because I want to be subversive. It wants to be subversive. Ok, now some parataxis. That means an owl. My insides owl. What is night? It is English. The subject object, the noun verb, the crickets' buzz, the velvet thickness of air. Thick as adjectives between adverbs' fingers. We adverb night when we adjective swim through English air and owls are a premonition of our weaknessless. Subversive because it is a translation from the original English. The original English: paratactic because one velvet thing after another and no one knew what it meant, cut from soil then brought a great distance and lifted into a circle of standing sentences. Arrive at the right time and it aligns with sun. Speaking the known to owl, from knurl to slurry, speaking English to night what isn't Englishable. English like us, grown around a wound.

*

The Birds' Lullaby
E. Pauline Johnson

i

sing to us, cedars; the twilight is creeping

  with shadowy garments, the wilderness through;

all day we have carolled, and now would be sleeping,

  so echo the anthems we warbled to you;

        while we swing, swing,

        and your branches sing,

    and we drowse to your dreamy whispering.

ii

sing to us, cedars; the night-wind is sighing,

  is wooing, is pleading, to hear you reply;

and here in your arms we are restfully lying,

  and longing to dream to your soft lullaby;

        while we swing, swing,

        and your branches sing,

    and we drowse to your dreamy whispering.

iii

sing to us, cedars; your voice is so lowly,

  your breathing so fragrant, your branches so strong;

our little nest-cradles are swaying so slowly,

  while zephyrs are breathing their slumberous song.

        and we swing, swing,

        while your branches sing,

    and we drowse to your dreamy whispering.

 

We While is Sing (Bird Lullaby)

we while is sing

the while to song

sleeping

while we their arms 

to warbled day 

we drowse pleading 

while so strong

and little your birds

our you to all the now would have us

echo wooing through you 

the hear lullaby

zephyrs swaying into wilderness is voice

we here swing we 

dreamy swing

is branches slowly cedars 

so breathing swing

shadowy and your garments,  

branches twilight 

drowse your nest-cradles is

to sing to lowly 

to lullaby sing 

to whispering swing 

to dream i, we, and creeping be

to night-wind dreamy lying are

your whispering we longing 

so drowse your cedars we 

your sing

we your and your and anthems  

to restfully sighing 

are you dreamy swing  

to reply and us to carolled branches 

soft and us slumberous 

us branches and sing

us dreamy sing 

are so with breathing fragrant 

us your whispering

your dreamy sing so 

dreamy cedars your sing to sing