Imaginary Translation: Ward of Her Words

after Rainer Maria Rilke

The ward of her words – the one with the fruity tongue,

that hearty mage – devours.

See the blue-bloods on their over-decks, he murmurs,

in their hundred wedge-shaped yachts.

Ah, the lessening if, striving toward servant

and swabber with these Young Turks,

he picks water lilies, seerosen.

The ward, cunning and wonderful,

a flatulent lout.

Ginger grows amok around his garden hose,

driving him to the docks – her word’s

ward, that precious dissembler.

Amongst those twisted pungent roots

the maddening instance of sign

is so over-full, so versatile in hearing light,

and flung so far a-field

that all the shining, all his bloody brilliance,

is dull as cistern and solvent jug,

cannot bring sea to bear.