To the Hammock on New York Street With a Nod to James Wright

We never could figure out what the cement structure was in the backyard, but we knew it would be the perfect place to hang a hammock. A tree overhead with just enough shade to read and just enough sun to feel warm. Though I’m living off a student loan for the summer, I splurge, planning to spend every afternoon writing there, so really, it was a professional expense.

I was taking French I, which was really “French for Grad Students Who Need a Second Language But Don’t Want to Speak It.” Dr. Max Rennaud. Seven other students in the class. We had to select a text from our disciplines to translate. “Except poetry,” he said, looking at me as if I had committed a crime. “Poetry is impossible to translate. You’ll have to go with a story.”

In the library, I pull book after book off the shelf. I want to be home, in the hammock. Keith will have cleaned the kitchen. He has probably cut up a cantaloupe and it’s chilling in the fridge. The French love melon, don’t they? He’s reading Rexroth or Haines or Hamill.

I grab a collection of French stories, take it over to Rennaud’s office and, with a huff, he approves one. Back home, I settle into the hammock to translate. A nest of baby bluebirds above me; their squawking a faint accent to the page. Lori’s gladioli’s outrageous bloom. I can smell the irises. I have a glass of sun tea. I forget I am living on loans.

The story begins with a man, distraught in Paris. So French already I think. His lover has left him and he moves closer and closer to the window (la fenetre). And he jumps. I am only on the second page and this is a first-person narrative.

Dictionary by my side, I keep translating, knowing I must have this wrong. The falling man pauses, it seems, at the 27th floor and invites himself in for a drink. I keep translating. Maybe I have the verb tense wrong? He falls again, this time laughing.

Three hours later, I quit. How could poetry have been worse? Tomorrow I will take it into Rennaud and he will nod, Oui, oui. Tres bien. He is not from France. He’s from Muncie. “French surrealism!” he says, surprised I didn’t know.

I thought I was reading everything wrong.

My surrealism: a hammock. A train passes. Gladiolus taking over the yard. A pile of books and a notebook beside me. A French teacher from the heartland. Inside, Keith is cutting melon into a bowl. I lay here, wasting my life.