I’m going to try a little experiment. I’m going to translate some poems, not just into English, but into Baseball. I suspect the result will be an exercise in corniness and cliché, but that’s never stopped me before.

This translation is of a poem by the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. It’s called “En värld är varje människa” (Every person is a world). After learning that Alex Rodriguez will be a New York Yankee, it seems appropriate, somehow.

Every person is a team, with a roster
full of egos in silent rebellion.
Each player is a prisoner
inside a thousand possible battles
against a thousand possible enemies, and these battles
though incomplete, truly exist,
as real as I am. And the stars
and superstars who rule these possibilities
are themselves trapped
inside some larger entity whose ego and soul
they understand as little as we understand
theirs. Their losses and victories
paint the colors of our emotions.

The clear evening sky sparkles.
Beyond the horizon, a mighty steamship passes by.
We’re unaware of it until the swell hits the shore,
first one, then another, and many more,
the waves crashing and rumbling until everything settles down
as it was before. And yet, everything is different.

A strange anxiety casts a shadow on us,
telling us that a voyage has begun,
that a possibility has been unleashed.