There's Something I Want You to Do

The poet held himself up with straight soldierly posture, like a veteran in a wheelchair, but his face betrayed him: his left eye, lower than his right, looked at Amelia with patient compassion, while his right eye gazed on indifferently, as if two separate selves were housed within him. His uncombed hair rose wildly from the back of his scalp, and his large ears stuck out from his head like jug handles. He was a very homely man with no appealing features. His hands trembled as they rested on his thighs. The expression on Sorovinct’s face was one of scrupulous interest dimmed by time-distance and dream-distance, both of which were causing him to disintegrate.

Amelia waited for him to speak. When he said nothing, she told him, in his native dialect, “My name is Amelia, and I…”

“I know who you are,” Sorovinct told her in perfect English. “You’ve been trying to translate ‘Impossibility.’ ”

“You do? Well. Then you know that I can’t get anywhere with that poem.”

“And you never will,” Sorovinct told her. “You’ll never get that one right. You’ll just have to give it up.”

“I hate to. I’ve spent so long on it.”

“Too bad,” Sorovinct said, rubbing his chin. “Just forget it.” He picked up his book of poems from the floor and opened it in front of her. “There’s something I want you to do,” he said. He pointed at a page, where a poem entitled “Forbearance” appeared. “This is the poem you should be translating. It’s more compatible with you. And the tone? Much easier. You’ll manage this one in no time, believe me. Please just do what I ask. Also, and I don’t mean to be rude, but it would be better if you did it right now.”

The dog to Amelia’s right barked twice, as if saying, “Cut! Print!”

She awoke and turned on the bedside light. It was four a.m. She went over to her suitcase, took out the volume of Sorovinct’s poetry, and turned to the poem he had pointed to. After sitting down at the hotel room desk, she reached for her pen and translated the poem line by line, each line almost instantly suggesting its equivalent in English. She wrote out the translation on the hotel’s stationery. The entire process took less than thirty minutes. The poem didn’t really sound Sorovinct’s characteristic note, but so what? She was under orders. When she returned to bed, the time was five minutes past five o’clock.

She had never seen a dog in a dream before. And the dream hadn’t allowed her to say goodbye. Why was that?

—

At Catherine’s memorial service, midway through, Amelia rose to speak, with the hotel stationery in her hand. Looking out at her family, she said, “I want to read a poem by Imyar Sorovinct. I’ve just translated it. It’s called ‘Forbearance.’ I’m reading it in memory of Catherine.” She lowered her head to recite, her voice trembling. “Forbearance,” she began.

Who is the child who stands beside this sea, wind-broken, wracked

With spray that seems to paint his skin with heaven’s tears?

And who might be this man but the father of the boy, standing there

In wrinkled clothes, holding a halo above the child to keep him dry

Out of sorrow, out of love, at this abrupt and stony seashore

Visited in autumnal days? This is the child who clutches at his father

Who intercedes for him, this quiet, vested man guarding the boy

From rain and spray. This is the child who does not speak,

Who never speaks, who must be blessed. The gulls are circling.

There is something patient in the waves that they both imitate,

And it is in the rain and spray that one feels the power

Of forbearance, in this autumnal drizzle

Soaking the parent and his child, loving what is damaged

And wholly theirs, held like a precious jewel

Tightly, tightly, in their hands together.