I worked on translating “A Howling Gale” (“List Otbrulen”; first anthologized in 1910), literally “Torn, broken leaf,” on and off for about six months. There is a sense that translation is never really finished; it is eternally in development. I could fall into a black hole with nearly each individual word—a fact compounded by the existence of the very specific rhyming structure in the original: A, B, C, D, D, B. This seemingly small poem is extraordinarily relevant to the immigrant experience—even to the refugee experience—of today. The author himself writes it while he is in a foreign country—Macedonia. The image of the leaf, being blown away from home, at the mercy of all, is potent. It speaks to the eternal otherness of us as humans; ultimately, everyone is alien. As an immigrant myself, there is hardly a more stinging verse than “But for him none waits, / so why the little orphan / for the motherland should wail?”—because although there might not be anybody back home waiting, she who has left country and family always cries for her motherland.