Lorenzo Cologero, Lost in Translation

TRANSLATION

ok so this is the first blog that i have written since being in flornce
at the moment i am working for a company who are chanpioning the work of this poet called lorenzo cologero who writes in a style that reminds me of eliot, though i find him to be more difficult to undestand due to the lauguage barrier but on the plus side he is a lot less refferancey, so i dont find myself having to look up random bits of literature
eliot is an education in itself
cologero is an expernce in the versatility of language.
Everyone knows and understands the concept of "lost in translation" some have even seen the sub-par
film of the same title, never has the concept been so real to me as now. i have said before that there is no such thing as a synonym i am beginning to also believe that there is no such thing as an accurate translation. when you look at a painting there is no way to say..."in other words" there are no other words there is an anecdote about the painter Matisse where a woman walks into his studio and said "i like the woman but her arm is too long" to which he replied "its not an arm, its a painting"
the point im making to paraphrase eliot is that no art or artist has its complete meaning alone so it is impossible to translate the feeliing and the meaning of anything simply by translating the words as an example of this here is my favorite Cologero poem followed by a flawed google translation

inno alla morte

ma non m'intressa piu della vita
oggi fra poco e alla svelta morro
perche anche tu con me sul lago
verrai domani. E la pelle e adunca
o si screpola appare sbadiglia.
con te tergiversare non vale una lunga pena
poco me intressa ella:
ora vergine sbadiglia
e il sangue e fluido o e la medesiama casa
tu come un giunco fresco
un narcisco ai messo alle nari

death hymn or anthem to death

but i have no more interest in life
today i take care of death (or today i cure myself of death)
soon and quickly i die
because you are with me on the lake
you will be tommorow
and the skin is hooked
a crack appears, yawns
to hesitate with you is not worth that long sentence
i am only intersted in she ( untranslatable concept of a higher "she" like, my muse i quite like the idea of translating it to, "i am only interested in her, that higher she")
the virgin hours yawn
the blood and the fluid are the same thing
like a cool rush
a daffodil put out to sea

both Mallarmé and Boudilare championed the importance of sound over that of meaning when i read this poem that idea takes on a new significance i am here in a country where i understand maybe an eighth of any given conversation and yet the simplicity of a line like "ma non m'intressa pui della vita" touches me in a way that broken, sign language assisted english can not. Nelson Mandella said: " if you speak to a man in a language he knows it goes to his head , if you speak to him in his language it goes to his heart" he is right but i also belive that if you speak to the heart no matter what the language, the heart understands.
this poem is both esoteric in its presentation and universal in its subject matter making it a sitting contradiction when he writes "oggi mi curo della morte" he suggest that in truth there is no "cure" "fra poco alla svelta morro".
he reapeats the word "sbadiglia" or "yawn" bringing to mind a wide gaping hole that seems to represent both life and death in its infiniteness.