Another Pnin Poem by Chen-ou Liu

A Haibun for Vladimir Nabokov

I hate hearing myself speaking English. My voice sounds inhuman... mechanical. In the strain of translating a Chinese word into its English equivalent, the spontaneity and natural quality of my speech are lost. I feel that I'm falling out of the tightly knit fabric of emotional vocabulary into a hole-filled net of linguistic signifiers.

April snow...
not a word passes over
my tongue