Alone in the Beinecke with Langston Hughes

From draft to draft, I see the translator’s
tension headache, a grind of molars.

					   +++++++++++Despierto entonces de mi propio 
					     +++++++++++grito,

the close of Gabriela Mistral’s poem
“Dormida.”

					   +++++++++++Awaken myself with my own 
					     +++++++++++screaming

Langston Hughes translates
at first. Eventually, he realizes:
not screaming but crying!

					   +++++++++++Awaken myself with my own 
					     +++++++++++crying!

A familiar thrill: archive. A striptease
as old journals unveil sweet nothings.

Near my sublet, a young man hollering 	   mami
could be interpreted as a gesture of 	   belonging.

I slurp an helado in front of CTown
as thunder claps in the distant rain.

My first night in Fair Haven, I woke up 	   crying,
alone again with a stipend but no friends.
My second night, I woke up 			   screaming,

Revision, the difference between sensations
which lurch us from sleep. I knew then how
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++mi propio grito

woke me. I had no son. No home.
No world. Only a pencil. Only my hand
caring about such trifles. I rock the raw meat
of my body, and my pulse mills the beat
of an affect translated through me, a feeling
we all know, yet remains, somehow, ++++++++untranslated.