Dirt Poor

/reposted from FB, March 25, 2013/

 

So I was really thinking I'd never find a good translation for the title of Cynthia Atkins's poem about Hurricane Katrina. 

The poem is called "Dirt Poor". It is (do I have to say it ?) a brilliant poem, moving and subtle — as always with Cynthia.

 

Finding a pun, or any kind of play on words that would also combine in French the notions of "dirt cheap", poverty and dirt, seemed quite impossible. In fact, so it still seems. However, I've managed to find a little something and am asking all French speakers out there to help me with it. I've temporarily translated it as "pour une bouchée de fin", punning on "bouchée de pain" (literally "mouthful of bread", metaphorically "dirt cheap"), pain/faim (bread/hunger) and replacing the image of dirt with the more abstract notion of ENDING ("de fin").

 

Part of me thinks that the faim/fin thing is overdone, part of me would like to stick to it because of the Beckettian undertones ("endgame"/fin de partie) : I seem to have spotted an allusion to Godot in the "shoes that don't fit / the blisters no more".