from CANDIDA: A Translation

The girl is carried across like so many others Smallpox or more recently cholera being
one of the first things to bring across

It is how you make proteins Meaning it is how you make a body out of parts

It is a fragile peace between the private host and the public host It spoils the worms in a
foster corpse

It is a form of parody One of the most useful and badly used weapons

With hook lashings in its back it brings the relic from the tomb to the cathedral Meaning
you are a hero and a saint

It resurrects you without you ever having to meet death That old comedic nugget

In some factions you get your own day

According to the Church of Latter-day Saints There are a few people who have been
translated All of them men Some of them were taken to heaven

The girl is not taken to heaven Although she is translated

Anna Lee Skarin said she had been translated She invented a technique that permitted
anyone to translate themselves right into Heaven She used a spiritual eye to look right
into the Spirit World The Church of Latter-day Saints excommunicated her She
disappeared and people thought she had finally translated herself right into Heaven But it
turned out she had faked her translation and was hiding out in Northern California

She just died Like you’re going to die

What is a fake translation It doesn’t make any peace For one It still makes a body But the
parts are distended at the joints You are neither a hero nor a saint Except maybe in the
vast criminal underworld Where you are both a hero and a saint

Does it still carry a girl over That I couldn’t tell you In both cases the boat is an
unreliable hand-me-down

Is it time for the earth to strangle me off the coast of Libya

It was not meant to bear this many people