Victim Of Imagination [rev] Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Now its clear in retrospect how I create my own failures:
without inspiration I can't work on research & translation,
and once I start - I'm carried away by fantasising what a
great job I'm doing - enjoying work of fording streams &
scaling hills - climbing mountains and falling into every
trap and hidden-foxhole, knotted-grass, intricacy of my
translation; the whole process becomes a mystery and
my adventure relaying source information to the target
language becomes a miracle play I dream to entice

Client & superior alike; if I don't allow my Inner Self to
create like this I become catatonic, incapable of doing
anything much less work on my desk; but ensconced
happily in daydreams I analyse every term & phrase,
a brave adventurer; on completion I take a precious
document created reverently to Mother Abbess in our
bureaucratic convent & joyously dance away, pleased
with the intellectual challenge - that is until fear begins
in me the Abbess won't like what I did

Anxiety makes this mountaineer shiver - then the text
is returned with so many changes that it feels as if the
Little Alien in my head shrivels up & dies upon viewing
rational changes made, seeing all the exotic, carefully
chiselled phrases rejected as inapplicable; heartbroken
I go home to lament my lack of prowess, all is dark and
hopelessness UNTIL a new task is given me and the
Little Alien revives and takes control by inventing yet
another game of combat against Translation Dragons,
any resistance against such childish play shuts down

My mind and I grow stiff and ill until I relent & the Little
Alien directs the game; as a victim of my imagination I
go along and enjoy it intensely - while knowing that on
the other side, after enjoying the wonderful view from
the mountaintop of a job completed, lies the universal
disappointment and rejection - sometimes it doesn't
hurt too much and on other occasions I want to die in
shame and sadness - until the next job comes along…