C.C. BARFOOT, who until his retirement in 2002 taught in the English Department, Leiden University, published The Thread of Connection : Aspects of Fate in the Novels of Jane Austen and Others (1982) and over the last thirty years articles on a wide range of subjects from Shakespeare to contemporary writers. Alone or with others, he has edited some eighteen books. He has been writing poetry since his late teens, but he has to call himself an “occasional poet” since he has never attempted to publish a volume of his poems, and they have only appeared in print (or on the screen) when a contribution of some kind has been asked for. Perhaps the time has come to put them together as a collection – although whether anybody would want them on their shelves is another matter. He feels that although too much poetry can never be written, perhaps too much appears in print. He recognizes that in recent years much of his poetry is a different way of writing an article or giving a lecture, and when it works it is much more succinct and engaging way of developing the kinds of arguments and making the points that might have appeared elsewhere in prose. “Translation” was written in response to a conference on Drama Translation and Theatre Practice in Salzburg in 2002, and first appeared in the published conference proceedings in 2004.