Medicine for Earl/Medicina desde el Quijote para Earl

 

AFTER CHOOSING JOHN RUTHERFORD’S

TRANSLATION OF QUIXOTE FOR YOU,

AND BEFORE IT ARRIVES, A WORD,

         --Medicine for Earl 

EARL: Don Quixote rests dangerously

at one’s bedside. One can argue

critics have read him wrong for 400 years.

I’m signing on with the subversives.

Caballero andante, you’ve walked

enough misunderstood trails, know

friends feeling the need to caution

all that comes up in dreams. Rutherford

says, make it modern, keep it old;

make it English, keep it Spanish.

Dangerous without being read.

Errantry isn’t for those gone astray,

but for those of us, who’ve left home.

Anything less than everything leaves

only bird cages and toothpicks.ⁱ

Love, Jim

19 January 2021

¹Don Quixote, John Rutherford translator,

Part II, Chapter VI, p. 525

1Don Quixote, John Rutherford translator

, Part II, Chapter VI, p. 525

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