The plays you translated you made something of,
your translations of the verse of friends comparatively
    little—
as though this had been dictated.
But how clearly you had heard,
how vividly, vigorously did you transcribe!
As for your “X-ray vision”…
You were attacked on account of it, for being too literal,
in that you told no more than you saw or heard,
keeping your eye on the task, not yourself.
Still, the words were yours.
But if you knew this—how could you not have known!—
evidently it did not trouble you,
as it might have me, for instance.
On the contrary, you accepted the odds,
accepted the dilemma, which was a human one,
and unabashedly lent the writing your strength and skill.
I was convinced that each time you gave yourself,
you were responding to a kind of call to learn.
Maybe what you learnt was just to give.
The voices of your peers had also to be heard and loved—
that’s what it was to be of their company.
But you had to serve yourself—
just as you yourself had to serve,
and it was yourself as well you’d to deliver every time.

From  Letters to Ted, published by Anvil Press Poetry Ltd.,  2002