more on 'mr nipurl'/'mr neville'. the translation reads like a series of 3 haiku: simple, concise, with a sense of (thousands of) years of culture behind each word or phrase. i can't? keep on saying this, but perhaps the original is more explicit, more rich. the original would have less of a haiku effect in that it has many more syllables per line than the english version, and would i think be said (sung) faster. the style in the translation is straightforward, vernacular, but without the notes (which are longer than the poem) it would be quite obscure to me. but this isnt i dont think what would be concerning me exactly. there are various tones in which to express 'what does this mean?': querulous, resentful, curious, excited ... poems don't need to stand alone. 'ngarla songs' gives the poems plenty of context with the introductions & notes to poems, the bilingual text .. but even without all that, the poems would still have each other. thats how you can read poems, as part of a larger text. reading isnt a closed transaction. (and as derrida writes somewhere obscurity and clarity are both metaphors, already mediating the secondary text, ie the saying/writing on a text.)