Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

In Translation
      For Danielle Legros Georges, Teacher

I once translated Ausländer’s
“Damit kein Licht uns liebe.”

I didn’t think I could translate a poem
from a language I don’t know,

but at the state college
in a classroom, old, airless,

the teacher said we could learn
even though we didn’t know German.

I see the soldier’s flags—
shrill, sharp, or pointed,

depending on the translation,
but their guns are always guns.

We discussed historical context,
the poet’s concision, use of repetition.

How to capture the starkness
of the work, the beauty

of the teacher, her brilliance.
I can’t get the words right.

The poet’s name, Rose, flower
or love, Ausländer, means outsider.

I never had an ear
for foreign languages, except once.

I’m thinking of the book
that the teacher made each of us,

our various translations of
“So There’s No Light to Love Us.”

I’m thinking of the book, the light,
the teacher, and how she bound us.

Dorian Kotsiopoulos is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work has appeared in literary and medical journals, including Poet Lore, Salamander, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, On the Seawall, and Third Wednesday as well as in the All Poems Are Ghosts (Tiny Wren Lit) and The Book of Jobs (ONE ART) anthologies. She is a reviewer for the Bellevue Literary Review and a co-director of a reading series in Boston called Chapter & Verse. You can find Dorian on Instagram @doriankotsiopoulos and Facebook @Dorian Kotsiopoulos.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx