For instance,
to turn off a light
switch
is inevidently
not to close
like a book
of history
or a country
off from another
such as kohtseh

                              "How do you close a light, Alan?"

say it: koh short o like
in fast policeman,
officer of the law
and government
agent of change,
and tseh like saying it's a
really fast.
The sound is respiratory,
is in/out,
lip puck then shut
the light,

                              "that's how"

but the truer one--the subject at hand--
and the problem with translation
is that it's
too literal a turn to lead to off,
like a corner
or a getaway car,
a tunnel in a wall
under a city,
or the turn of a screw,
like reverse with tartsur,
so that it's a
"How do you reverse the light?"
rather than turn it off so much
that it has to be close.

How do you reverse the light?

Just close the light, please.

____

"On Armenian Translation" focuses on what it's like to think in one language and speak in another, a common phenomenom among hyphenated Americans. It also grapples with frozen bits of memory in language, how words are a conduit to unreconciled history and translation a kind of demented digging.