But I wanted to be that

I am sorry to have to report that Mr P. Oram has beaten me to the achievement of an ambition I have cherished for many years. Reviewing our book Orchards in PN Review Volume 38 Number 4, Mr +Andrew Shanks makes the matter clear:

'To translate poetry is necessarily to accord the poems in question a degree of slowed-down close attention that is hard to replicate with poems written in one's own language. The seductively persuasive essay with which +Peter Oram accompanies his and Alex Barr's joint translations of +Rilke's French-language collection Vergers is a prime case of what one might call resultant 'translator's obsession'. Indeed, Oram writes here almost as if he were a character in one of +Jorge Luis Borges' fantastical short stories . . .'

Well! As if being a character in a Borges story wasn't something I deserve much more! (As long as it isn't +Dahlman.)

Mr Shanks goes on to say 'the effect of the essay is uncannily beautiful.'  Easy for a Borges character I suppose. 'And, what is more important, the translations themselves are also fine.' (Oh good.) 'There is a lot of rhyme in the French; always, surely, the biggest problem in poetry translation. Yet the English versions reproduce a good deal of it in remarkably natural-seeming fashion.'

Oh well. Maybe I'm a character in some other author's story. Maybe even, Mr Oram is created from my imagination, as in 'Las Ruinas Circulares'. But I don't think so - my imagination has its limits.