NER contributors in translation, Ross Benjamin (Friedrich Holderlin, 28.4) and Geoffrey Brock (Umberto Saba, 25.1 & 2), have won 2012 NEA Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects.
From Brock’s translation of Saba’s “A Winter Noon“:
Who in the moment of my happiness
(God forgive my using a word so grand,
so terrible) reduced my brief delight
nearly to tears? No doubt you’ll say: “A certain
beautiful creature who was walking by
and smiled at you.” But no: a child’s balloon,
a blue, meandering balloon against
the azure of the air, my native sky
never so clear and cold as it was then,
at high noon on a dazzling winter day.