Alex Z. Foreman, traduciamo il traduttore

The procrastinator

Turning against the turning of this earth

turning against the morning and his skill,

as good as dead of night, as day's still birth,

he would put off this piracy of will. 

Here south of self, here west of all success,

his brainless heart nailed to a crux of veins

must take in more, more of that sweet duress

and break through breaks to give himself restraint.

Now spineless body, help him stand awake.

Now grand delusions, help him make belief

that he fights bravely for some noble sake,

a hero dashing toward caffeine plus grief,

as if to save a world by having a soul

that could survive the little mind's black hole.

Procrastina

Volgendo contro il volgere della terra

volgendo contro la mattina e la sua abilità

buona quanto il cuore della notte, quanto la calma nascita del giorno,

smetterebbe la pirateria di volontà.

Qui a sud di sé, ad ovest del successo,

il cuore scervellato inchiodato a croce di vene

deve far entrare di più, più della dolce costrizione

e rompere rotture a darsi tregua.

Ora, corpo non spinato, aiutalo a vegliare.

Ora delusioni grandi, aiutate a credere

che combatte coraggioso per nobile fine,

eroe attinge caffeina più dolore,

come a salvare un mondo per avere un’anima

che sopravviva di piccola mente il buco nero.

Quand Vous serez bien vieille

When you are old, men will not want to hear
how you were once the idol of the bars,
how your lips mapped red countries through young heads
and little poets swore your eyes were stars.
Staying awake, though full of cold and sleep,
when leaves are blowing in your avenue
you will recall a lover of bright things
who, when he spoke of brightness, spoke of you,
recall our noon, how our great evening shrunk
to midnight whispers traveling the wires,
and our dark plot in kingdoms of the sun
where we have lived to bury our desires.

Quand Vous serez bien vieille

Quando avrete una certa età non vorranno sapere

come foste un dì l’idolo dei bar,

come le Vostre labbra marcarono rosse regioni per giovani teste

e piccoli poeti giurassero stelle i Vostri occhi.

Nella veglia, pur piena di freddo e di sonno,

mentre soffiano le foglie nel Vostro viale

ricorderete un amante delle cose splendenti

che quando parlava di splendore parlava di Voi,

ricorderete i nostri meriggi, come la grande sera si riduceva

a sussurri della mezzanotte che viaggiano nei fili,

e la nostra oscura trama in regni del sole

dove abbiamo vissuto per seppellire i desideri.

Γνoθι σεαυτόν

I.

In Egypt, I'm a Copt, my mother-

-tongue slit by Arabic and Greek,

Living a death as slow as the river

Whose mothersome water bade me speak. 

And I am the Andalusi Jew

In Casablanca on the run

From Christ's Castille, and even now

Weave meaning from that setting sun.

Really, I'm Jewish everywhere

Except, of course, in Israel

Where I'm Arab, a Jew, then a Canaanite

Murdered by worshippers of El. 

By my window that opens out to Greece

Is a Russian icon, a Qur'an

And a map where I can almost see

A country labled Kurdistan. 

There isn't a place that resisted invasion

That I don't call home. Not a man born free

That is not my brother. I owe a debt 

To every leaving cloud and tree.

And I may be a man, but I'll be woman,

I may be a white, but I am black.

I will go to the grave an American

Whose heart is buried in Iraq.

II.

Yeah, ain't that way it always feels?

You can't fall anywhere but down. 

So every time I reach a country

I pass the uppity downtown,

The statues, museums, and seen sights

Where circling jerks on tour all come,

And dive through the dives beyond the guidebook

To walk my wallet through a slum. 

The dialect's changed. Words banned from class

For being spoken by the poor

Are ghettoed here, where potential muggers

Tremble behind each bolted door.

Who am I kidding? They need cash.

What can you buy with sympathy?

And what in them dare I see of myself

From the Land of the Free-for-one-small-fee?

History's a gods-damned one-way street,

For all the good I might have meant

As if my life would be more righteous

By being worse and different.

I.

In Egitto sono copto, la mia lingua –

madre fessura di arabo e greco

vivente di morte lenta come il fiume

acque materne mi portarono a parlare.

E sono l’ebreo andaluso

a Casablanca, in fuga

dal castello di Cristo, ancora ora

traggo senso dal tramonto.

In vero sono ovunque ebreo

eccetto certo in Israele
dove sono arabo, un giudeo poi, allora canaanita

assassinato da adoratori di El.

Dalla mia finestra aperta sulla Grecia

un’icona russa, un corano

e una carta dove quasi vedo

un etichettato Kurdistan.

Non un luogo che resista l’invasione

che io non chiami casa.  Non un natolibero

che non sia mio fratello. Ho un debito

con la nuvola che vive e l’albero.

Posso essere un uomo e sarò una donna,

posso essere un bianco ma sono un nero.

Nella tomba andrò americano

col cuore sepolto in Iraq.

II.

Sì non è così che sempre si sente?

Non puoi cadere altro che in giù.

Ognivolta che arrivo in un paese

vado verso la boriosa cittàbassa,

statue musei punti di bellavista

tutti gli stupidi circolanti turisti,

m’immergo nei gorghi oltre le guide

il portafoglio porto ai bassifondi.

Il dialetto è cambiato. Parole bandite dalla classe

perché pronunciate dal povero

qui ghettizzate, dove potenziali delinquenti

tremano di fronte a porte sbarrate.

Chi sto fregando? Di soldi hanno bisogno.

Cosa si compra con la simpatia?

e cosa oso vedere in loro di me

da paese di Libero – per – un - piccolo - pedaggio?

La storia, sensounico dannato dagli dei,

per tutto il bene da cui ero arso

come fosse la mia vita più diritta

per essere peggiore e diversa.

upside down: appena rimescolato

1. I notice that people often say "gonna" instead of "going to." Some people tell me that I should just say "going to" since it's the more correct form. But friends of mine tell me it makes me sound overly proper and a bit unnatural. But it looks like "going to" can only be replaced with "gonna" in some cases, but not others. What's the difference between the two?
2. I notice that sometimes people say "because" and sometimes they say "'cause" with the "be" left out. People tell me that they mean the same thing, and that I should just use "because" since it's more correct, but now people tell me that I use the word "because" in some pretty odd ways. What's the difference in meaning between the two? I can't figure it out.
3. I notice that "nice" seems to have an odd usage when followed by "and". When people say "come in, it's nice and warm" or "Emperor Nero preferred to keep the populace nice and terrified." I don't know what "nice and" means there. My teacher managed to explain that it meant something like "really, noticeably". My friend told me that "good and" means the same thing as "nice and." But I heard a parent say to their kid "well you've got me good and angry now!" I asked a friend if you could say "nice and angry" in that context instead of "good and angry" and she said no. I asked why and she said "there's no rule, it's just one of those things about the way we talk. Either one will be understood. Don't worry about it." What's really going on with these words?
4. I notice that you can put "fucking" into the middle of an expression as in "no fucking way" or "right fucking now".  I've heard someone say "I needed to put my fucking foot down and simply say NO!" When I asked a friend if you could say "I needed to fucking put my foot down" she said yes, but when I asked her if you could say "I needed to put my foot fucking down" she said she wasn't sure but it didn't feel natural to her, and when I asked her if you could say "I needed fucking to put my foot down" she said that was definitely bizarre.  I asked her why you couldn't say "I needed fucking to put my foot down" but you could say "I needed in no uncertain terms to put my foot down." What makes "fucking" different from "in no uncertain terms" grammatically?
5. Speaking of which I have noticed you can also put "fucking" in the middle of a single word, as in "unbe-fucking-lievable" or "abso-fucking-lutely" I asked people if there are rules as to where in a word or phrase "fucking" can go. They said there's no rule, really- people just stick it in any-fucking-where they please. So I tried it with "stupendous" and said "stupen-fucking-dous" and people said that sounded weird, and the normal way to say it would be "stu-fucking-pendous" after the first syllable. So I tried the same thing with "absurd" as "ab-fucking-surd"  and "superb" as "su-fucking-perb" and that seemed totally normal to people, but everybody thought it was odd when I said "su-fucking-perhuman" for "superhuman." I asked why and they said "why do you assume there's a rule? This is just profanity. There's no grammar to bad language."Finally, my teacher managed to think really hard and tell me that you can only put "fucking" right before the stressed syllable. But then why is it okay to say "un-fucking-believable" as well as "unbe-fucking-lievable." (But "unbelie-fucking-vable" sounds bizarre somehow.) Even when I point out the fact that there seems to be something non-random and complex about the way "fucking" is inserted into words, people usually insist that I shouldn't be looking for grammatical rules, because "there's no grammar to the way people butcher words with profanity!" I don't get it. Why are English-speakers so stupid about what grammar is and about their own language?
6.a What does it mean when a man addresses another man younger than him but not related to him who as "son"? Why is it that when I as a man do likewise to a man younger than me but not related to me, people are confused?
6.b Why is it that men greet each other with "how's it hangin'?" but when I as a woman the exact same thing, they find this odd? 

note for learners

Or: Why Arabic-Speakers Are No More Moronic Than You Are, You Moron!

This post is directed at Arabic-learners, and is meant to hold up a proverbial mirror, and dispel some commonly-held but seldom-recognized presumptions.

I have noticed more than once that learners of Arabic, particularly at advanced levels, are often frustrated/confused/saddened by native speakers' claim that spoken Arabic has "no grammar" (when it does) or that "there's no rule for when you use word X vs word Y" (even when there is) or "I dunno what that means, I just know you can say it sometimes and not others."

The above-sketched phenomenon is not a sign of backwardness or anything of the sort, which is the way people often seem to treat it. (Though I'll be the first to scream that its ideological ramifications can be consummately annoying, especially for learners, given the way language is politicized for various reasons in the Arab world.) All it signals, really, is that the literary language whose grammar Arabic-speakers study in school is not, and is not normally imagined to be a possible reflection of the way they speak. A natural result of this is that most of them don't think of the grammar learned in school as analogically transferable to their speech. 

English-speakers if educated even moderately, are taught that somehow the way they speak is, or at least "should" be, governable by a system called grammar. This is neither a mark nor a product of any kind of superiority, cultural or otherwise. It is merely because, apart from spelling (which reflects the pronunciation of half a millennium ago), Modern English has a relatively narrow gap between its literary and (at least some of) its colloquial forms⁽¹⁾. This may look like a boon, in that it seems like it would make things simple and easy as indeed it does in many ways, but it has some complicated and uneasy side-effects because the grammar one learns in school is never the full story. At best, as in the case of e.g. Standard French to some degree, it merely gives an approximate idea of the way some version of a language at some point in the past among some group of speakers used to be⁽²⁾. In particular, English grammar as it has come to be taught, or rather inculcated, derives only in part from an attempt to describe how the English language works. A significant proportion of the English grammatical tradition has simply been hallucinated into existence by erudite morons too drunk on snobbery, Greco-Roman autoeroticism and tribal race-myths from the ancient Near East to even notice that Latin, Greek and Hebrew did not exhaust all the possibilities for rule-based behaviour in language, and that English did not need to be shoehorned into behaving like them or be described in terms of features it did not possess.

The false assumption that the system of spoken English is, or indeed ever was, governed by the conglomeration of arbitrary precepts inflicted upon schoolchildren in the guise of grammar then gives impetus to violate the rules which do govern one's actual speech but which do not accord with the construct which schoolteachers call good grammar. Thus the myth that "I" marks a sentence's subject and "me" its object leads people to try and claim that "me and Paul went to the store" is incorrect and one should say "Paul and I went to the store."⁽³⁾  This then leads, among other things, to hypercorrections such as "between you and I" (which is not stigmatized, and nobody will be denied a job as e.g. an office receptionist for using that phrase in an interview, even though someone who says the equally non-standard "I ain't seen anybody" will not be working at the front desk any time soon.)

On the other hand, the gap between spoken and literary Arabic is much greater than that which exists between (non-stigmatized forms of) spoken and literary English. So a vast number of Arabic-speakers (though by no means all), and votaries of the Arab grammarian tradition, are not trained or accustomed to think of "grammar" (i.e. the thing learned in school) as analogically transferable to normal speech.⁽⁴⁾ Inasmuch as many don't readily conceive of grammar as something that can be applied to spoken language, they are indeed prisoners of their schooling, even if they are able to describe how different dialects have different verbal peculiarities, for example. (The notion of grammar writ large may not necessarily be  conceived as being part of that.) English-speakers, too, though they typically are trained to think of school-learned grammar as relatable to speech, nonetheless imbibe that grammar in the form of a  bizarre cocktail of misconceptions and half-truths,  and are prisoners of their schooling as well, a schooling which does mean that thinking of speech as rule-governed comes somewhat more naturally, but which also amplifies a host of sociolinguistic problems specificallybecause people try to relate speech to a fundamentally flawed concept which presumes that one can make systemic errors in one's native language, and therefore feeds into mechanisms of social inequality through stigmatization. It's not that Arabic does not have linguistic stigmatization among its speakers (it does in abundance) but because the ruinous question of "whose speech is more grammatical?" cannot be taken with quite the same seriousness, stigmatization cannot be rationalized by it but must find its justification elsewhere. It is therefore -at least in some ways- easier in many parts of the Arab world for colloquial dialects to become components of regional or national pride, (as Black English might do in the US if "educators" would accept it as an aspect of national heritage and stop treating it like a disease that needs to be cured, and then I wouldn't have to put those quotes around their profession.) Different situations, slightly different benefits, and slightly different downsides. Doesn't mean one is necessarily better than the other⁽⁵⁾.

To the degree that spoken English deviates from the written standard which people like yours truly have been taught to produce when communicating in textual form, English-speakers are just as hopeless and just as clueless about the rules governing their colloquial medium as Arabic-speakers are about theirs.  Most English-speakers who do not have any background in linguistics have extreme trouble even accepting the existence of, let alone elucidating, the rules for spoken English whenever these are not present in the written form of the language, or when these rules go beyond what we call grammar (i.e. syntax and morphology) but have to do with phonology, or meaning-related phenomena like semantics (what, and how, a word can signify) and pragmatics (the way in which context contributes to meaning.) 

Just imagine an English-learner asking an educated English speaker (with no background in linguistics at all) the following questions about the rules of Colloquial American English, covering phonology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics.  No, I'm not giving you the answers. I'm mean that way.

Footnotes:

1 - Indeed, this is truer of English than many other languages. Written and spoken French are somewhat farther removed from one another than their English counterparts, particularly when it comes to the lexicon and a few other things. Written and spoken Norwegian (depending on which written Norwegian -don't ask, long story-) are even more divergent. Spoken and written German were (and for many speakers, still are) essentially in diglossic relation until the written form heavily influenced, and in some cases actually became, the way people spoke to other humans, including their children. Spoken and written Welsh were in diglossic relation for centuries until a version of the spoken form became the new written one, i.e. the opposite of what happened in German.

2 -  Standard French, for example, contains features that are essentially dead or restricted to affected/formal speech (e.g. inversion of the "Qu'ai-je?" variety, use of "nous" instead of "on" as the 1st person plural pronoun as part of a verb phrase) whilst lacking many features that have since become (or always were) a normal part of the way spoken French functions (e.g. Question-words unfronted without signifying emphasis as in the normal "Tu vas ou?" which is used by speakers of all social classes and means "Where are you going", not "You're going where?", also fronting without inversion as in the commonly heard but class-stigmatized "Ou c'est que tu vas", both of which stand opposed to the highly stuffy "Où vas-tu" or the less-stuffy but sanctioned "Où est-ce que tu vas?")

3 - They seldom consider why they feel the need to say "Paul and I" instead of "I and Paul", or why, if one is not supposed to say "You like linguistics? Cool! Me too!" one cannot replace "Me too" with "I too" but must rephrase with "I do too."  The actual way in which "me" and "I" contrast is somewhat complex and need not detain us here. But just as a teaser, one might ask why "Me and Paul went" is somehow logically "wrong" but French "Paul et moi sommes allés" is fine (and "*Paul et je sommes allés" is incorrect.) Are the French logically deficient, or are highschool English-teachers being assholes for no reason? My money's on the latter.

4 - Indeed, this has been true for a thousand years. Medieval Arab grammarians, when they write about "mistakes" made by the uneducated (the "Laħn al-ʕāmma" genre), are clearly only referring to colloquial-influenced mistakes made by those who attempt to use Literary Arabic but whose education did not reach sufficient superfluity to allow them to use it perfectly. With only a few exceptions (such as Ibn Khaldun, who wasn't a grammarian, and couldn't have even been a successful one had he wanted to be, given his nasty habit of thinking for himself) Arabic scholars before the 18th century have not really concerned themselves with the notion of native Arab speech-habits possessing rule-based features, beyond the notion that speech in 7th century Arabia had rules which Arabs of later eras ceased to obey (often, and in a spectacular proxy for mere racism, this would get ascribed to corruption by non-Arabs who couldn't keep it pure and made things chaotic.) 

5- Similar things could be said about other aspects of language-culture interaction. It is commonly said, for example, that diglossia is a problem for literature because it means that writers must essentially master a second language (and literary Arabic can be, and has repeatedly been, experimentally shown to behave, neurologically, like a second language in the brains of native Arabic-speakers.) Those who make this case are either ignoring or ignorant of the fact that most men and women of letters throughout history have had to do so. Aside from the falsity of the presumption that one is by definition more expressive in one's "first" language than any other, it has been a  pervasive tendency of "elevated" composition, in many cultures all over the world and throughout history, to display markedly conservative, archaic, formal or anomalous features relative to the author's natural speech. Du Fu wrote his poems in a somewhat transformed version of what the Chinese of a thousand years before him were speaking, and the grammar of his verse was as alien to that of his speech as that of Latin is to modern French. Though there are exceptions to this, they are not nearly numerous enough to be mistaken for instances of a rule. This is true of Greek, for example, in Hellenistic and Byzantine times thanks to the "Atticism" that preponderated among the literate classes, of which a bastard child persisted into the first half of the 20th century in the form of Katharevousa.
I could go on about how while diglossia may cause some problems, most problems blamed on it are more directly the result of related, but distinct issues, but I don't want this footnote to get out of hand. To take just one more example, the linguistic problem concerning the Qur'an is not, as it may appear, the fact that the language of the Qur'an is so remote even from the literary Arabic of today, but rather that the text is not glossed into colloquial, or at least Modern Standard, Arabic so as to provide Arabic-speaking Muslims with the same linguistic resources that their Persian-speaking, Sindhi-speaking or Urdu-speaking coreligionists have had for centuries. The problem isn't the language gap, but the failure to acknowledge it productively. (Consider how much easier it often is for native English-speakers who know French to understand Shakespeare in French translation.)