Syndic No.46 ~ Elin ap Hywel
http://www.syndicjournal.us/wp-content/uploads/SLIPPING-BY.m4a
Slipping By
Written by Elin ap Hywel
Translated from the Welsh by Laura Fisk
Narrated By Kristine Doll
UK Welsh
There's a clean smell on the young German
leaning across the table, a smell of forests
and snow glistening in the sun
like dainty pieces of glass that have been shattered
and the city
slips past on the U-bahn
the smooth wheels someone's oiled
and we know
that everything is going to happen just as it's meant to
and by the light of the candle we're talking about war
and look to the magic glass ball
to see people who live over the snow
making pictures of the Gulf on the tablecloth
and using napkins
to mark out positions of tanks
and by the light of the candle the night slips by
swiftly like a child who's newly found
that he can skate
In the town today
I saw a man
pulling glass from a pipe
he was sucking all the air
and turning it all into a dream
and on the naked branches his glass balls hang
their colors purple and gold
There's some secret to their making
that's too expensive for me to buy
that's too brittle for me to carry home to Wales
and we're slipping past by candlelight
and the rails are so so straight
slipping by on wheels someone's oiled
slipping by forever and ever and ever
Elin ap Hywel is a leading Welsh-language poet and translator. She worked as an editor at the Welsh women's press Honno. Ffiniau/Borders is a bilingual volume of poetry in collaboration with Grahame Davies.
Laura Fisk is an NHS clinical psychologist, a poet and translator from Wales. Collections of her own work have recently been translated into Estonian and Macedonian. She is currently translating a book of Elin ap Hywel's poetry into English.
Kristine Doll is a poet and translator (English/Spanish/Catalan). She teaches at Salem State University in Salem MA. Her work has been published domestically and internationally in such venues as Asymptote, The Seventh Quarry, Cross-Cultural Communications Art & Poetry Broadside Series, The Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Loch Raven Review, and Immagine & poesia. Her most recent translation from English into Spanish is the book of aphorisms written by Carolyn Kleefeld, Soul Seeds/Semillas del alma (Cross-Cultural Communications and Edicions Saldonar, 2021).