TRANSLATING MY DAD'S LOVE POEMS
after Yusef Komunyakaa
It must have been ‘98,
my mom leaving
for work, the first night
she doesn’t kiss my dad
goodbye. He closes the door
softly, walks slowly
to his office and takes a hammer
to the keyboard of his computer
as though desperately trying
to build something, until
the letters fly through the air
struggling to form the words
he can not. I watch from
my childish quiet, unnoticed,
unsure of how much time passes
before he labors over
the scattered keys, scooping
them up with small hesitation
like a man collecting seashells,
and striving to pop them back
into place, to remember
where each one belongs.
I am so much like my father, and so
I too fear love,
how I will inevitably fail it,
mishandle it, let it fall from my hands,
too fragile to survive intact.
Years later, I think of him
hunched over that keyboard,
the same one he used
to write the poems I’m now
translating, bent over my own
computer, alone in my apartment,
his words my inheritance,
dim foreshadowing— he writes Today
I will not think of you,
Today I will
not think of you, Today I will not
think of you.