Last Words
In which alien bandit miners invade the earth 

I want to be ready when the next gods come, to have a fixed look like the moon.
I want to have language assembled around me like a fort, 
to be resolute as stoves,
to see realistically upward like the workers in Constructivist posters, 
when they come collecting the mute ores, 
harvesting our turquoise eyes, 
our copper brain-stems in bloom.
I want to consider the roots.
     tigerystreifen: from the German, your nails on my back; 
     also, the path our heels make as we are dragged through time
     sarcophagus: a shell that, when held to the ears of the gods, 
     contains the sound of land

But I see them already, their pale faces rouged with distance--
that one with the cards, that one threw down the stars.
They are not keeping anything; they are like babies.
They are without matrices or an array; they are in babies' uniforms.
If I signify, they will be astonished.  They will know I am not their animal.
But my mirror, it has clouds in it--
     breathing: an agreement in which nothing inhabits everything.
The flowers and the faces bleach like pages.

I do not trust these spirits.  Their numbers are like dreams, like gases.
I cannot apprehend them; they calculate in fugues.
     sacador: from the Spanish, the openings from which 
     meaning escapes the body
Already they are droning the colors from my cells.
The suns of my feet have gone out.
They roll me up in their federations, memorize my heart, wrap my interior 
and place it under my feet in an accurate package.
I know myself badly.  I, he, it will be dark,
a small candy in the pocket of Ishtar.



NOTE: Systran's Babel Fish software (http://babelfish.altavista.com) was used in the making of this 
homolinguistic "translation" of Sylvia Plath's "Last Words."  Her text was translated into German, 
French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and back into English; each translated text became the source
of the next translation.