Transelating "The Waste Land"
Click on a stanza 
to view its full transelation chain
Yehonatan Sella
Ape reels the foolish moth, weeds
lies, lacks doubt from the bed , panics.
Men, organs of ire, lure
vandal boots, whisper “rain”.
Winter keeps us warm, hovers.
Earth frets, beads
a lit knife with doofers.
Serpentine hums careen over, the lake
flows with raisins. We hop in the lemonade
and drink coughs and walk dead until tomorrow.
Kind gestures stem in a Lithuanian sketch. Dutch
and Finnish children sway with the arch-duke’s
sly cousins. The book means “forest ledge.”
It is height and his head merry.
Merrily folded tights announce, “weavened.”
In the fountains. Where your eels be
once. Eat too much light, and gold spleen tears.
Wet are the roots that drink; wet branches glow
out, in this stone near a bush. Son of man,
you can knot sayings or guesses, for you know only
a web of pulsing images. Beware of the sun that beats,
and the debt regives snow shelter; the cricket knows relief.
And the driest tonal sound of water – Only
here does shadow wander this red rock.
(come and smell the shadow of this red rock),
And I will smell something different from
your shadow at morning striding behind your
shadow at evening rising to meet your
eye. Well, show your fern a hand full of dust.
First you wet the wind,
then he met you.
The Irish kind.
“Who are you?”
“You gave him hyacinths first a year ago, right?”
“I wanted to, but I never did.”
--Yet when they came back, ate from the Hyacinth garden,
mouths full, hair wet, he could not
speak, and his eyes feasted, he was definitely
living, and he knew nothing
but hunger, his heart light, the silence.
Let him eat in peace.
Body-
and saying, "my tea sticking me
in
Boys send orange pudding to the queen. A structured vision -
Whatever. Shall I beckon to moats with my steamboat?
Or fish in wider finds?
The dish, I must say, is excellent.
A warming of stomachs against the dinner table.
Luscious, and more of her secret recipe. Dragging on; a hissing
of half a tail.
She brought the "fear clouds," and much water. Long stairs distance me
from my feet, and the rest. I climbed silently,
not knowing if my right foot or my left was the numb one—
Lick everything yo know to be edible.
A lone bridge below winter rain;
bees flit under the snow.
This painting looks nothing like winter.
Hovering soldiers tread these passages—
That fool paid for a cab to take him to Romania.
The children must stay inside and play games.
But yesterday in seminary, rage overcame him.
His beard shined. He yelled something about
death, and rebirth.
"Don't spit on peaceful snow! Get off your flying horses!"
His screams fell.
She spat at perfection
her lazy hair falling.
The riddle calling:
Even when no route
seems to lead to the source of the buzzing
you can find rabbits being chased with nets.
This is a market you cannot find elsewhere.
She hid under the blanket,
refusing to sleep, but the darkness frightened her.
She rose to the sink. The melting stone reflects
the glitter of the dry
crusted nightgown. A shadow slips
into the room, even as she showers, her clothes
on the one-vined wisteria, dry.
She filled her hair with soap.
She wanted for once to
want to be clean. It ran down her ears.
She heard words,
trees with gray roots and hollow wood.
The mother laments the heart and the soul,
scoops the whole world in her hands.
A million different woes yielded to her touch.
The boys came, they wore lightning on their gowns.
They played hounds, they went far into the attic
they forgot to fear the voices
only the echoes multiplied
they gathered bones and spun them in place
they ignored the stairs' moans
spiderwebs slanting, what flies do they expect
to catch in here? their joints
felt like they could split any second
in the red boxes they collected bee wings
so glazed from the theft they
did not look at the wings carefully to see
lines running in parallel.
The mother laments again,
says every boy is her boy.
She tells them they will become men.
Friction excites men - this she knows.
Disease blows lightly on the living.
Her warning - don't let the attic blind you.
The kids nod of course, setting the bees aside,
winking at the sun.
"I'd die for a man that is lax, immobility to impress," she told him as she dressed.
Watching shows the exact use of lifelessness.
He weeds wrappings. Sea, so sparkling, in a second weaving yolk and buildings, harsh.
Angles have only insides, are physicality alone.
Departed Solomon bore herds' wool. At it, he dented the prized grayling.
The plaza was full of birds and countless verses.
Blotch your vision, until you wake over the mould. Finally,
wings that you can see. Veins beating in the dust silently. Then,
forgetting sound. Deep holes cluttering the train station, where
they play board games. Check-mate with a piece of rock.
Waving a black flag, with a hole. God is speaking to you. Listen!
There, their neighbors stooping over patchwork. "A blanket," they say. They sew it together.
No one saw the young boy in the store, hungry, swallowed by sediment.
There they were, sewing an ever-growing blanket, to cover - what?
It was she who saved us.
It was he who dropped us down.
She pulled weeds from the hill; the soil was angry. He
hogged the truth
(which was fine with us)
which way should we go to sell our mud? A mile a day.
He faked walking on a rope high in the air - there was no rope.
We sold brownies indistinct - each bad. We said, "our hearts soak of mud."
With cavities of earth we spelled words by the tractors.
We wrote, "from walking a day, a cow a million."
He saw us, and disapproved. She let the ink fall on the paper
and we watched it spread.
Someone bought something; with the fall of night, watching
brings crickets and stirs them to song.
White surprised us. The war, we were told.
We saw her holding his hands.
That the earth would split if they ever traded parts!
The falling snow covered everything we had previously written;
We jumped in it, searching.
"A basket?" one of us said, his voice rising more than we thought necessary.
"Why do you give us a basket? Give us a bed!"
She smiled, smoothed his shirt, and pointed at nothing.
Naturally, we weeded weeds from earth still untouched by snow.
He took her off behind the mountain. When he returned he told us we had gone too far.
She tried not to think this evening, succeeding.
She dressed up in green; we pulled out weeds.
We imagined pulling out weeds from her dress.
In the morning we told her of our seven dreams.
She seemed shorter and taller and younger and older and exactly the same. She sat in her bed.
We walked. Snow melted, mixing earth.
It was she who first would frown and later would sweat.
It was he whom we don't remember ever having met.
She said, "set up shop. Today we sell high!"
There we hung, waiting
to add a sum to the books of war.
Nymphs wail in the high sudden sea
Looting through minds, splitting bodies, hiding in deep caves.
But not nymphs - something else.
Their pilings, their falsifications. The Gods are with them, not us.
If we were sailing too fast, we would have met on rhyme!
As the ship sails there is no screaming. The danger is clear.
Throw pebbles, watch them melt into the sea.
We are most nervous when the sea is calm
scared by the noise of our machine.
They sometimes have wings, sometimes hang winglessly.
They rise from ripples, from stories, from wood.
But when the young man pointed a ways off, dust fell again.
We find ourselves gripping the railing, light reflected from ripples, teased by wind.
The soon-setting sun paints the horizon.
Horizon painted! Sea painted! Painted!
We forgot - to what destination did we set off?
The sea makes us thirsty
The humming of the engine in darkness covers us again.
Bare walls mope, confined to a muck of layers of paint.
Sigh, bring the tiger out, blow the horn, recall centuries of fright.
We won! It is marked with a dot. And we will never have to grapple free of this notion.
Follow the dull fan's hum. You will see they usually glow in the day and grow in the night.
They fire, and stink of guavas - the same smell every day.
Not underdressed, and feeling white we walked, bowed. Our eyes never met
the eyes of the emperor in the tree.
Did you see the sailor set out this morning? Passionate in his glorious voyage
and afraid? The romance of thunder is fickle and brings so many people to sea.
In passing, he pressed his finger to the sculpture, whispered
farewell, hovered at the dock.
Tear open tingling spaces wherever you are!
Your plant grows fast, the stars cooking.
For saluting and heart-beating seem old.
It's not a route you can find by searching.
You catch the firefly circling over and over again and you wonder
why you won't spot anything metallic on the mountain peak.
Did they tie their hearts to the mast? Swish swash swish swash.
Birds cry of the rain in your pouch when you looked out your window
and said, "What a fine day! For sailing!"
The sun flits. A natural crack.
Possibility does not pass this border.
The four encumbered guards sleep, their guns rest on their laps.
To hear calls of the unimaginable!
Belong to the stone, ride twice no stops.
I saw a pocket with no pants today, what do you think of that?
The dental clasp of stone wraps you up. Wraps up a storm,
a goat, a tail, a harmonica as well.
With deaf flickers wires simmer about, singing.
People stooped to look. The more they looked, the less they saw.
The food hall is filling up soon.
Last month the filth piled.
Though mosses fell about, I pulled the roots away.
The wind blew, but father's knives pressed against the wooden board.
(wind belongs to snow).
The cakes are almost ready, in full dressing.
The breath hums something unknown. The food will not rot tonight.
She told him to take another guess. His diction worse than the flow of snails
he guessed the boats slipping across sound.
The chefs wore familiar aprons today. The meat was tough.
The grapes have ripened. The sick ones fixed.
Drown the wheat bedrock.
Free them from the stone.
Where can I find the maze?
The birds are spies for the trees. The boats work harder,
the honey combs want to be eaten. Eat them!
Above the clock towers, a dove boasts flying, which is low and high.
All in one door knob, one step around the broken glass.
A game we used to play. Not to be won. Not a game at all.
After he wrote the eleven chapters, he told the party he was done.
(A mistake on his part)
He was taken to the beverage shelves.
He longed to count the bottles; Instead, he counted names.
"What's in a name?" he yelled. "So what if my name is Jim?"
He whistled this fact to the grownups.
He turned bald the next day. To the mirror he yelled -
My thoughts! My thoughts!
Held in the note in the history rack,
he thins fourteen delicious meatballs weary.
Will he talk? Long dust defeats
red stones. Baking stout schnitzels, while half leaning.
Pulse gaping; fizzing in, as noted, ice. Sovereignty wins;
Two teabags tear, fall easily.
Hauling a bag of flour,
never mind.
Exempt of her plums, her rosy cheeks, her fingers
always yours to count.
She stalked beastly; one millimeter of rhymes-
The heel turned (the bend knew).
It could have been new.
The porch lights bled on pretty faces;
The spitting and smiling race on,
cracked plates reverberate.
You wonder of wings, of reddened fountains.
He who was giving was not fed.
We who were leaving are now hiding.
With a little license
fear is turned; but no elastic sock
and no one to bind the hourglass and row
the boat. "Blinded by love," he told her amidst the melting pans.
Switch your mouth and lock it. Reward them
if they learn to pop,
and sink.
"In one's eruption, one cannot but sink."
Sweaty thighs defeated, worn in the band
of war. Only water.
Amongst the lack, dead maintains its shadow; we cannot sit
here, under this sun.
It splices the fountains,
restates its outpourings.
I spot odd souls folding laundry in the mountain planes,
stolen gazes, dragging white wedding dresses.
It is us they search for.
And no rain.
If where we rested, clocks rewind
and clocks worked wonders…
A spiraling fool among the flock.
And were we hounds of whet appetite,
not the sick? Ought we
bind brass wings
over mounds of hot earth?
Take cover under a rock.
Bear the cold back.
Her nightgown thrusts wings in the pine trees.
Swish swash swish swash swish swash swish
no rain.
Whose is this herd that walks always behind me?
When I count, there is always one more than the last time,
but when I look down the white road,
they eat grass, innocently gathering, rapidly begging.
I do not know, shall I throw them a stick?
-But whose is this herd that walks behind me?
What is that sound low in the sky?
More, more of maternal lamentation.
Where they stood, hordes warming
over endless plans, sputtering naked earth.
Ring the flat horizontal
city over the mountains.
Crack and reform and burst the violent air
flying higher
Until-
My woman buys me rotten fruits.
The coy voices of seeds purr.
Patience at a loss,
hidden bees producing honey in holed-up places.
That wood seemed lonely once.
She's instead gone to rhyme "disembodied" with "distraught."
The young ones seek bliss
from the heat of frayed sun.
We can only wake them up by weeping many times.
Find the route away from the gleaming haze.
Fingertips closing around something cold.
I climbed up the mountain and emerged a free spirit.
My fear of falling became
a fear of ripe apples, the beating
and squashing of the taste of growth, this bleak juice,
drop by drop absorbed by the ground.
These men eat what they grow.
They count their crops
during morning,
and in their dreams reap the years.
The waist of a goddess I sought
when I skipped stones on the sun-bitten sea.
In the beginning there was a goddess.
She launched the world into a start by sneezing.
Men offered blankets to cover
this vast mystery.
When heaven falls, the gods have the greatest pleasure.
The ball enjoys its gravity.
Sitting on the boat, they count silently,
their skin a little melted
as when my father took me to discover sea.
Body touches water, a solvent. Dissolve me.
"Here. We have to catch up."
Look how you relaxed.
The raven flies high. Too high for me to care about.
The boat sunk. It got too comfortable.
A slip of paper. The ink fades in water.
In the wind, everything looks like wings.
Passing through the strait,
and out again?
I loved the whirlpool because I loved the whirl.
Which one was I? Of those thrown to shore?
The sand was warm on the surface, but beneath it was cold.
I generalized Shakespeare: what's in a surface?
That the sea glows when the sun touches,
that the sea is ancient, found in every myth?
The good thing about Spanish is that a question has a marked beginning.
The sand, a vast hand that shoves you
into granularity. I am behind enemy lines.
Dry-tongued, I wish I forgot how to speak.
I know too well what the sand says.
"see, saw, grainy once. Suffice grainy."
Sand, and the warm pages.
They split me apart.