Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










By Joseph Schreiber

A grammar of the untranslatable self

I am my own translator, imagining a life into language, the one that I speak, the grammar I breathe, each sentence crafted out of all the sorrows and songs I’ve ever known. Transcribed. To imitate some truth of being. My truth. But where does that truth rest? Our earliest self-images are the product of a mythology, moulded by memories of others, stories
told, pictures taken, precious objects, fragments of feelings formed without words or contexts by which they can be framed. Shaped, reshaped, and edited over time. Truths are relative. There is no Ur text of the self. Authenticity is a chimera. My genesis, if it exists, lies in an ancestral, biological and cultural morass from which my identity arises, accordion-like,
a cut-paper lantern stretched over mountains, across valleys, down through the years.

We are never one singular voice. We are multitudes.

I’ve echoed choruses, line after line, attempting to sing myself into existence. A song defined by the body, trustless of soul, projecting a mirage with no substance. Clothed in imagery and metaphors overly focused on the flesh. The scars. The anomalies that mark me, that set me apart. Obsessed with the bone-bound limits of my otherness. Worrying a moving target, a shadow being. But the self never rests, it’s always just out of sight. Two steps ahead. Of nowhere. Of me. I need a new vocabulary. Not one seeking to solidify by defining a body, denying its spirit. Not a broken rock, but a smooth lake, stilled in the night air. Occasional breezes may ripple the surface. Doubts. Recurring moments of frustration, then, stillness again. Storms may rise. Rage even. But inevitably all winds ease, waves settle, and calm returns.

I am a body of water. I am a river of dreams.

This is my self. I am my own translator.

 
 
 
← Joseph Schreiber