93

Oh, yes. In this off-the-chart country, the present is pretty unbearable too, but that poetic thing with the firefly makes no sense in any of its possible contexts here.

So how translate firefly into this other tongue?

I have seen a live firefly, a single one, with my bare eyes, but it was elsewhere, in a different language landscape.

It was that time of night way out in the countryside; dark; quiet.

There was this firefly, hovering above the still, black, unswollen water.

Here, dead in the middle of a summer's night, any insignificant, dully coloured moth would be the nearest equivalent for the purpose of translation, a hovering, quivering thing without the stark, coloured light, and there are daybright nights too throughout the sleepless summers ...

As for the 'nothing else', I have my doubts.

There's always the common delusion, not least in summer, of the possibility of a something just around the corner.

We have a very limited experience of war.

Suicides are common in spite of all that.

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99

"still, black, unswollen water"

Isn't there a word for that?