Dear Richard,

I lay in bed
and read C.T.'s "Flour"
just a few moments ago.
Let's call him "C.T.K. One"
like two assholes, okay?
I was smiling
at how much Norma Cole
made "Flour" a Norma Cole poem
but that's what translators do,
and if it had to be
a "somebody" poem,
a Norma Cole poem
will do just fine.

My Bird Book
meets the telephone directory.

Does nicely as Tarkos strategy.

I suppose to translate
French poetry
of "that sort"
you have to be a seagull,
an arrogant bird
when I watch it
on the boardwalk
of Atlantic City
and elsewhere,
your wingbones able
to store enough cold
to be able to cross
the gulf of feeling
between America and France,
which are both anyway
(anyway both)
imaginary qualities.

Your wingbones should
stay cold, I suppose,
and as a translator
don't try to shrug
any longer, because you
don't have shoulders
you suddenly remember,
crossing this fucking ocean
of translation
which never really ends.

This illusion
there is anything
under you.