TRANSLATING ICE THE GLOSSARIES OF ICE AND SNOW

TRANSLATING ICE: THE GLOSSARIES OF ICE AND SNOW Or “A Lexicographical Winter Wonderland” (Pullum) Amy Cutler University of Leeds, United Kingdom

Only now a wordy ghost Of once my firmer self I go Floating across the frozen tundra Of the lexicon and the dictionary. W. S. Graham, Implements in Their Places (1977)

Deep in the fissure between times, at the ice-comb waits, a breath-crystal, your un-assailable testimony. ERODED by the beamwind of your speech the gaudy chatter of the pseudoexperienced—the hundredtongued perjurypoem, the noem. Hollowwhirled, free the path through the menshaped snow, the penitent’s snow, to the hospitable glacier-parlors and –tables. Deep in the timecrevasse, in the honeycomb-ice, waits a breathcrystal, your unalterable testimony.

With a changing key, you unlock the house where the snow of what’s silenced drifts. Just like the blood that bursts from Your eye or mouth or ear, so your key changes. Changing your key changes the word That may drift with flakes. Just like the wind that rebuffs you, Clenched round your word is the snow. With a changing key, you unlock the house in which drifts the snow of the unspoken. Your key changes depending on the blood that gushes from your eye or mouth or ear. Your key changes, the word changes, that may drift with flakes. What snowball forms around the word depends on the wind that rebuffs you. With a changing key you unlock the house where the snow of what’s silenced is driven. Just like the blood that flows from your eye or mouth or ear, so your key changes. Your key changes, the word changes, that may drive with the flakes. Just like the wind that rebuffs you, the snow is packed round your word.

In its first dumb form language was gesture technique of travelling over sea ice silent before great landscapes and glittering processions vastness of a great white loony north of our forebeing. Susan Howe, Secret History of the Dividing Line (1978)