Fortuitous Poem by Tom Stoppard

The train slows
Crawling through the French quarter of the City on the Delta.

The sun hangs like a copper pan
Over boarding houses with elaborately scrolled ginger bread eves.

In the red-lit shadow of wrought iron balconies
Octaroon Loreleis sing their siren songs to shore-leave sailors,
And sharp-suited pimps push open saloon doors,
Spilling light and ragtime to underscore the cries
Of old men selling shrimp gumbo down on the levee…

The Day the News Came from Poland

When the news came from Poland about his family
Father lied down on his bed and wouldn’t move;
It was also the day of his son’s bar mitzvah.
A big social hall had been rented in Brooklyn
And the boy was giddy with anticipation.
When it became clear that his father wouldn’t go
The boy screamed at him telling him he had to.
The father went. When the crowd cheered
“For He Is a Jolly Good Fellow”, something
On his father’s face made the boy realize
That he had done evil.

The boy’s name was Maurice Sendak.

Screenplay Writers Like Prostitutes

Screenplay writers like prostitutes;
They help move things along
To stay within the 100 minutes target
Skipping all sort of complications
(How will he get her to sleep with him);
In exchange the writers give them
A heart of gold and a happy ending .

With his profession (international selling)
And his awkwardness with women
He had learned enough about prostitutes
Not to expect a heart of gold
Or a happy end or much of anything.
He was too old for sex now
And thought of the women
When he didn’t want to feel sorry for himself.

There was a woman in NY, very pretty,
He thought too pretty for the agreed price
And the shabby establishment
Till came the time for her to undress
And she said “I hope you don’t mind
My mastectomy,” which he didn’t really
Only a scar where the breast used to be
Burned itself into his retina for ever.

Outside his hotel in Santo Domingo
A woman approached him
And explained in simple Spanish
That three women standing
On the other side of the street
Charged very little only because they were sick;
Grateful, he went out with her
And three days later had to look for penicillin.

The Russian woman at the Frankfurt airport
Was brusque to begin with
And become more short-tampered still
After he reminded her that he had paid
For an hour; but it wasn’t worth it
And he let her go; maybe she was freelancing
And worried about her pimp.

In Dar-es-Salam, at dusk
The approach was humble
But the tone was urgent
And when the price was named—
One dollar at the black market exchange rate—
He couldn’t say no. The place of business
Was the cab of a truck parked nearby.

That woman was a grandmother, for sure
And yet, of all the women he had ever met,
Paying for it or not,
None could compare to her beauty.
At least as he remembered it now and
Though he knew that memory played tricks
He liked this particular trick.

He hoped that
The money he handed over,
In greasy bills that stuck together,
Paid for some food and a child’s toy.

Fortuitous Poem by David Bellos

…the practice of translation rests on two presuppositions:

The first is that we are all different…
The second is that we are all the same…

Translation is another name for the human condition.

The Judge Turned to His Wife

The judge turned to his wife
As the dinner was placed on the table
"You wouldn't believe the guy I had today
Actually tried to tell me that the city was late
Paying for the after-school basketball clinics
The school district had hired him to run,
And he couldn't pay his child support on time.
I told him, Sir, if you don't like the way the city is paying
Get yourself a nine-to-five job or sell your car
But do not come here before me offering excuses!"
The teenage daughter mumbled under her breath:
"Way to go, Dad. You really showed him.
Those nine-to-five jobs are like so everywhere
Practically begging for workers and his car,
Probably a piece of junk, worth maybe like 300 bucks,
And his only way of getting to his job.
But it's good to know you are ready
If the city is ever late paying you."
The judge and his wife exchanged a look;
The word "puberty" did not need to be said.