Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Lines for Translation into Any Language
- I saw that the shanty town had grown over the graves and
that the crowd lived among the memorials. - It was never very cold; a parachute slung between an angel
and an urn afforded shelter for newcomers. - Wooden beds were essential.
- These people kept their supplies of gasoline in litre bottles,
which the children sold at the cemetery gates. - That night the city was attacked with rockets.
- The firebrigade bided its time.
- The people dug for money beneath their beds, to pay
the firemen. - The shanty town was destroyed, the cemetery restored.
- Seeing a plane shot down, not far from the airport, many of
the foreign community took fright. - The next day, they joined the queues in the gymnasium,
asking to leave. - When the victorious army arrived, they were welcomed by
the firebrigade. - This was the only spontaneous demonstration in their favour.
- Other spontaneous demonstrations in their favour were
organised by the victors.
James Fenton was born in Lincoln and educated at Oxford. He has been a political and literary journalist at The New Statesman, a free-lance reporter in Cambodia and Vietnam, and a foreign correspondent in Germany for The Guardian. He now reviews theatre for The Sunday Times; You Were Marvelous, a collection of his theatre criticism, will be published this year by Jonathan Cape. (updated 1983)