Translation Problem #2

Parthenocissus triscuspidata

   Vedo un’altra

pianta nel giardino buio e

   penso debba essere

   un salice piangente,

ma quando glielo chiedo, dice: No,

   è un alloro

   avvolto in un immenso intrico

d’un rampicante che vi si è appeso,

   un rampicante che non fa

   danno all’ospite, pende

simbioticamente, e basta,

   in posa poetica.

Ecco che svanisce

un’altra lugubre illusione,

   dico, e lui ride

My transliteration: 

Parthenocissus triscuspidata

I see another

plant in the dark garden and

I think it must be

a weeping willow,

but when, to him, I ask this, he says: No,

she is a laurel

bound in an immense maze

of one ivy that, from it, she is hung. 

One ivy that does not 

harm to the host, but hangs

furtively, and that’s enough

in pose poetics.

Here she disappears

into another mournful illusion,

I say, and he laughs.  



I decided to keep the Latinate title. On the one hand, the term, though in Latin, is easily accessible via the internet. On the other, I found any other translation, or (re)naming, of this plant too lax; the alternate names (for this plant) seem too specifically relative/relational of a culture. I did not want to (pardon the pun) root the title in a specific location. As for the form: I was not strict or faithful to the translated original, though I did attempt to retain some semblance of the form. That being said, the most challenging part, for me, surfaced in the (un)gendered pronouns. Given that I know a little of Egan's personal life (of her husband and how he tends to inhabit her poems) made my pronoun (in)decisions somewhat easier. However, I still struggled with the others: Do I make the laurel a female? The ivy, "it" or male? And why? What would change-- demographically/regionally and socioculturally--if I (re)gender the plants in my transliteration?