Silver Edges

I once read about a Latvian poet who renamed himself "Sudrabu Edžus" — "Silver Edges." I like to picture him in his wooden house, surrounded by bare birch trees creaking under the weight of freshly-fallen snow. The poet writing away by the fire, his felt boots hung in the hall, composing his poems about tears in the gloomy Daugava, and taking a deep, satisfied breath before he signs his chosen name at the end. As if his name could wipe the soot off his brow, tip the snow from the trees. As if his name could drag the sun kicking and screaming in through the window on a dark and gloomy night.

The importance of names. I sometimes translate the names of my Latvian friends: Partridge. Basement. Daugava dweller.

I wanted to write something warm on such a cold day. Create words that could melt snow. Something I could wrap my hands around so that they'd be toasty again. Instead, I play these word games, changing one word into another to see the world a new way. Like lying on a bed upside down.

Imants Ziedonis's wrote in his Epiphanies:

Words flirt, vowels are coquettish, consonants vamp. Here anecdotes are told. A deceptive mosaic of words shining in a playful light. Are you going to eat those pepper-cakes, or are you going to decorate the Christmas tree with them? Tonight are we talking about caradmom, cinnamon, or vanilla?

I love those coquettish vowels. And for some reason I feel warmer.

Could it be that these words come from such a cold place that, when bent and twisted into my own words, broken like a pocket warmer, they begin to warm my hands?

I don't know how it works. But somehow the sky doesn't look so gray anymore, there where the silver edges peek from under the clouds.

(Related: At Granta, Jeffrey Yang wrestles with translation, via Maud.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.