And We Shall Not Get Excited
And We Shall Not Get Excited - meaning Summary
Translation as Restrained Mourning
The poem treats translation as an act of restrained transmission: the translator is a calm mediator who passes words, memories, and features from one generation or language to another. It links linguistic transfer to familial inheritance and to loss, recalling slipped possessions and a beloved's departing words. Repetition of we must not get excited frames silence and measured memory as the ethical response to grief and testimony.
Read Complete AnalysesAnd we shall not get excited. Because a translator May not get excited. Calmly, we shall pass on Words from man to son, from one tongue To others' lips, un- Knowingly, like a father who passes on The features of his dead father's face To his son, and he himself is like neither of them. Merely a mediator. We shall remember the things we held in our hands That slipped out. What I have in my possessions and what I do not have in my possession. We must not get excited. Calls and their callers drowned. Or, my beloved Gave me a few words before she left, To bring up for her. And no more shall we tell what we were told To other tellers. Silence as admission. We must not Get excited.
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