Elana Wolff – Concern for Soul Consumes Me

Wolff LE P&W Eng-Chin Jan 2023 copy

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing English-Chinese Edition January 2023

Concern for Soul Consumes Me, poem by Elana Wolff.


Concern for Soul Consumes Me

In the northern garden
dwell two tall
catalpa trees.
Their large and heart-
shaped pointy leaves, downy
undersides — soft as fontanelles.
They’ve let the spotted
red-capped woodpecker in.

Form is the polar opposite of chaos,
wrote Roberto B.
I take release from this and that

the dead, he said, yes even the dead
are being developed.
Eventually, by this conception, everyone
will be among the co-
developed dead.

Concern for soul consumes me.
I sit in the northern garden —
in the hazy
shady shape of it
and follow my steady breath — born
as it’s being breathed, it seems. Streaming
so organically,
it can’t be pre-constructed.

Invisible and thin and free,
as baffling as Kafka —
whose rendering of difficult things
was easier for him, it seems to me,
than birthing breath.
Will teachers of any persuasion contravene me?

Not the two catalpa trees.
Not the spotted woodpecker. Not his crimson cap.


灵魂探究,我心沉醉

北方的花园
有着两棵高大的
梓树。
尖尖的宽大
心形树叶,底部
毛茸——像脑门柔软。
它们让红帽
白斑啄木鸟进入。

形式是混乱的两极对立。
罗伯托巴兹伦写道。
我由此获释,而那个

逝者,他说,是的,甚至逝者
也在被演变。
最终,据此构想,所有人
将居于共同
演变的逝者群中。

灵魂探究,我心沉醉……
坐在北方的花园里——
在那朦胧的
阴暗的轮廓里,
伴随我平稳的呼吸——他活了
就像被吹了口气。流畅
自然,
难以预制。

无形、轻灵、自由,
像卡夫卡一样费解——
他对棘手事物的呈现
在我看来,比孕育呼吸更容易。
可有某个流派的导师对此异议?

那两棵梓树不会。
那只斑点啄木鸟不会。那深红色帽子不会。


Chinese translation © Anna Yin/© Elana Wolff

埃拉娜·沃尔夫是加拿大诗人和作家,著有七本诗集和一本论文集。她的诗歌发表在多个加拿大知名杂志,并获得奖项。她的诗集《Swoon》(格尔尼卡出版)获得2020年加拿大犹太文学奖的诗歌奖。她的最新诗集《Shape Taking》于 2021年出版。她的跨流派卡夫卡探索作品集将在2023年由格尔尼卡出版社出版。她目前在安大略省Thornhill生活和工作

Elana Wolff is a Canadian author of seven poetry collections and a collection of essays on poems. Elana’s poems have most recently appeared in Arc (Awards of Awesomeness), Bear Review, Best Canadian Poetry 2021, Canadian Literature, Literary Review of Canada, and The New Quarterly. Her collection, Swoon (Guernica Editions), won the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry. Her latest poetry collection is Shape Taking (Ekstasis Editions, 2021). Her cross-genre Kafka-quest work, Faithfully Seeking Franz, is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in 2023. She currently lives and works in Thornhill, Ontario.

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