Before my friends Bruce and Margaret Marshal had taken up strawberry farming in the Midwest, they lived in a little hillside house in a tiny Northern California town called Inverness. It was named that way because its lochs and gentle hills make you feel that you're in Scotland.

We visited their poet and translator friend, Robert Bly. Bly had a red-haired wife, who seemed to rule the roost in a very quiet sort of way, and what appeared to be dozens of red-haired children scurrying about. I could only ever count up to seven of them before losing track of which ones I had already counted but I always remember their number seemed infinite. At the time, Bly was translating into English, many of the works of a Chilean poet named Pablo Neruda. Years later, I read in Time magazine that Bly had started some sort of men's liberation group.

Bruce has a stammer. Through fits and starts, he taught me a lot about Beethoven. Bruce is also a translator. German to English. Sometimes, when his speech gets really congested, I'll say "Just sing it," and occasionally he does. Apparently the part of the brain that controls singing is different from the part that controls speech so when he sings it out, there's no hesitation. I hear some choirs are filled with stammerers who nevertheless can sing without a single glitch.

Bruce was particularly proud of a translation he had made of a statement by the thirteenth-century German mystic, Meister Eckhart. When he showed it to me he was glowing like an angel:

To my outer self
Bread tastes like bread,
Wine like wine,
And creatures like creatures

To my inner self
Like gifts from God;

But to my innermost being
Like forever and evermore.

© 2005 __Muldoon Elder