The prompt from Jeff Griffin took me to the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology. As suggested, I read it through and transcribed chronologically and without punctuation what words or phrases I found “remarkable.” I then copied the text into Google Translate through a cycle of 5 different languages and then back to English. I’m afraid the chronology and substance of what I first noted remained more or less in tact in spite of Jeff’s prediction of translations going awry. Perhaps I was inept at the process. Would not be the first time. The poem below uses unaltered words and phrases which keep faith with the order in which I noted them originally.
Misspent
How the feminine gains strength
smelling of silence, prayers wearing out,
old thoughts—unbroken, never corralled.
To keep us from home, now I expose
the ironed life in ‘glorious’ childhood
which did not heal with time.
Nothing passed between us
but, under this wing, hard love,
possibility, memorable patience.