Sharing a poem

It's a new year, and while I doubt that I'll continue blogging the way I once did, I'd like to once again share a few of the things that make me think, or wonder, or hit that chord that resonates through my day.
To kick it off: While waiting in the cute little café across the street from my apartment for a long-overdue chat with the inestimable Miss Julie, I picked up a poetry collection on the shelf that surely must have been required reading for the adorable manager, Xilu, who is currently studying Philosophy and occasionally asks for my help in translating passages from both English and incoherence (I'm not sure which is more challenging). As I was flipping through the book, I came across this gem that everyone who has ever conversed in a second language will probably appreciate.

Speaking a Foreign Language
by Alastair Reid

How clumsy on the tongue, these acquired idioms,
after the innuendos of our own. How far
we are from foreigners, what faith
we rest in one sentence, hoping a smile will follow
on the appropriate face, always wallowing
between what we long to say and what we can,
trusting the phrase is suitable to the occasion,
the accent passable, the smile real,
always asking the traveller's fearful question--
what is being lost in translation?

Something, to be sure. And yet, to hear
the stumbling of foreign friends, how little we care
for the wreckage of word or tense. How endearing they are,
and how our speech reaches out, like a helping hand,
or limps in sympathy. Easy to understand,
through the tangle of language, the heart behind
groping towards us, to make the translation of
syntax into love.