TRANSLATING ICE: THE GLOSSARIES OF ICE AND SNOWOr

“A Lexicographical Winter Wonderland” (Pullum)

Amy CutlerUniversity of Leeds, United Kingdom

Only now a wordy ghostOf once my firmer self I goFloating across the frozen tundraOf the lexicon and the dictionary.

W. S. Graham, Implements in Their Places (1977)

Deepin the fissure between times,atthe ice-combwaits, a breath-crystal,your un-assailabletestimony.

ERODED bythe beamwind of your speechthe gaudy chatter of the pseudo-experienced—the hundred-tongued perjury-poem, the noem.

Hollow-whirled,freethe path through the men-shaped snow,the penitent’s snow, to the hospitableglacier-parlors and –tables.

Deep in the timecrevasse,in the honeycomb-ice,waits a breathcrystal,your unalterabletestimony.

With a changing key, you unlock the house wherethe snow of what’s silenced drifts.Just like the blood that bursts fromYour eye or mouth or ear,so your key changes.

Changing your key changes the wordThat may drift with flakes.Just like the wind that rebuffs you,Clenched round your word is the snow.

With a changing key, you unlock the house in whichdrifts the snow of the unspoken.Your key changesdepending on the blood that gushesfrom your eye or mouth or ear.Your key changes, the word changes,that may drift with flakes.What snowball forms around the worddepends on the wind that rebuffs you.

With a changing keyyou unlock the house wherethe snow of what’s silenced is driven.Just like the blood that flows fromyour eye or mouth or ear,so your key changes.Your key changes, the word changes,that may drive with the flakes.Just like the wind that rebuffs you,the snow is packed round your word.

In its first dumb form

language was gesture

technique of travelling over sea icesilent

before great landscapes and glittering processions

vastness of a great white loony north

of our forebeing.

Susan Howe, Secret Historyof the Dividing Line (1978)