All translation is a haunting. To translate is to take possession and be possessed by the text. In Villasis’s brief poem, I am haunted by its spectral music. The poem begins with the consonance: “Tanging kidlat na lámang ang ilaw namin sa paglalakbay./Mula sa bintana, sa bawat kislap ng liwanag.” I replicate the L sound by repeating “light” and employing “flicker.” The poem then proceeds to the clever line: “Nagwawala/Ang uwak sa hawla,” which I render by rhyming “crow” and “grow,” repeating also the K sound in “cage.” Overall, I attempted to transpose its music through repetition, sibilants and internal rhymes. I think of my translation as an echo, a phantom of the original, an evocation of the ghostlier demarcations between languages.
Read the Filipino-language original, “Arka,” and the English-language translation, “Ark,” that this note is about.
Bernard Kean Capinpin is a poet, translator, and recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.