See You in the Dark: Poems

Untranslatable

16 UNTRANSLATABLE Little Greek fish with no name, you came in a mound on a platter, fried, succulent, praised by the waiter in that café on the beach, Aegean water lapping under the moon. We tried all the names we knew of small fish— sardines, anchovies, smelts, herring, minnows— but he kept shaking his head— no English name. In Greek? He shrugged: We call them little fish. Little fish, size of minnows but not minnows, fish as fine as you deserve a name. When I want to revive that summer night, the soft air on our skin, the skimming surf, the stars, the shiny fish we ate with our fingers, a savory, garlicky fishy flavor, I want a word. Without a word memory’s a cloud I can’t slide my hand around. Little fish, how did you glide so nimbly past the translators? ...