The king stares, unblinking, at your portrait on the wall, drinking you in with eyes red from tears or maybe it's from the fire you've lit inside him. The questions start. Who is this crying king? Who is the speaker? Who is the "you" being addressed? More questions follow, but of a different kind. Where does this come from? What is the text's name? In what language? Who wrote it? When? These are all good questions, and there are good answers to be had for them. But notice how your mind is off

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... d running. Running away from the text. What comes next in the translation may make you stop in your tracks: Allow me to restate this problem: 1) He's studying that painting of you 2) Unblinking 3) With deep attention and affection. 4) There are tears in his eyes. 5) Those tears are mine, says the eye. That's what happens if you don't blink. 6) No way, says Love. They're all mine. 7) This dispute remains unsolved. Note that this second verse does what it says: it restates the first. It stays with it, closely, but it also adds something. It asks what it means to "stare, unblinking. " What it means to have a fire lit "inside you. " These, too, are good questions, but where are answers to be found for them? Actually, nowhere but here. Answers We know that when we are utterly absorbed in reading, something from the outside comes to life in our heart too. The object of such rapt attention is wondrous, but so is what happens to us. We are among the first to admit that what happens to us when we read translations, however, is often less than wondrous. This may be more about us than about the translations themselves. We are suspicious, and we justify our suspicions