I often find myself contemplating death. But, it is important for me to note that I often disguise laziness as contemplation. I may spend a whole day mulling over dying and thinking that because everything will pass, what's the point of trying and failing? Or, I often get so caught up in the contemplation itself that nothing further happens. If I do proceed from my false contemplation through laziness, I can only enter into a cycle of passivity in which I become careless with others and with myself. This floating along in the current of death allows for no sort of agency, and agency is not desired. The only way out of this passive cycle is through some opportunity that arises for transition, a longing for presence, or perhaps a longing to live sincerely and to create. In that case, it is necessary for me to re-evaluate my thoughts on death and to enter a state of contemplation that is sincere; contemplation that is based on hard work, self actualization, and honesty.

From that point, I begin to question my motivations for my actions. If my motivations are centered on self-promotion disregarding anything else (or in the case of translation specifically, self-promotion without regard to what's going on in the original poem), I can only follow on a path that leads to irresponsibility, which then leads back to the cycle of passivity through carelessness. But if my motivations are based on the promotion of life and growth, I follow a path of agency in which I become more aware of the relationship between action and consequence. And through that relationship, creation and destruction, as a pair, come into being. And they both point to transition (or translation), which as before, is rooted in death. Perhaps it is both ironic and sad that the life of passivity and agency are both loops of sorts, but it can only be this way, otherwise, there would be no growth or opportunity. I am constantly in danger of choosing to be careless and destroying my life. Just as I am constantly capable of choosing a life that engages transition in a way that refuses to retrofit, in a way that can promote presence in thought and action by seeking to grow.

The choices that I make are inevitably forced to own up to the thought that created them, and to the action that will follow. As in translation, the linguistic choices that are made must own up to the original poem and be choices similar to what the original poet would have made if he were writing in the translator's tongue and during the translator's time. "Attempting to preserve the tone of the original in the translation is oftentimes not a quality that can be aimed at, it is a function of the writer's sincerity and it arises on its own in a translation if you have listened deeply enough to the original text and at the same time been faithful to the genius of the English language" (Mitchell, 1996, p. iii).

With each poem that is translated we learn more and more how to translate, and possibly more about the range and beauty of English. Oftentimes, translation is approached as a discipline for learning how to write and hear. For example, Merwin said, "I started translating partly as a discipline, hoping that the process might help me to learn to write. [Ezra] Pound was one of the first to recommend the practice to me… The work of translation did teach, in the sense of forming, and making available, ways of hearing" (Merwin, 1979, foreword). The linguistic knowledge gained by translating is secondary compared to the life knowledge gained by engaging in a practice that promotes the understanding of thought, action, and consequence. The translator's ability to listen and learn from his or her predecessors is also strengthened because he or she attempts to embrace the past and those who have died.

"All writers learn from the dead. As long as you continue to write, you continue to explore the work of writers who have preceded you; you also feel judged and held to account by them" (Atwood, 2002, p. 178). This is the point where the responsibility of the translator is the most clear, and that is to translate for the purpose of preserving the integrity of the poem, the original poet, the dead, and of course, the translator him- or herself.