The translator's difficult chore

The following writing is something I have struggled with since childhood. The writing is partly about the task of translating works from one language to another language. I used to translate French into English as a favor to my French-speaking father. And obviously, the other aspect of the writing is the difficulty to express beauty in words;

The Translator’s Attempt

You can only be an impression.
Like a poem written in a foreign tongue;
the translation fragmentary.
In transcribing your whole
the rich, closely woven fabric
of your language is lost, perished– forever.
I can read you–
yes, I can read you; Indeed
I have read you.
But to ink the depth of your beauty
and pen the texture of your humility
I am un-able,
incapable.
You have your own idiom.

Although my whole life has been spent
reproducing ‘the sound and the fury’
of the Old Masters,
this hand and these lips can never resonate
the grace these eyes do read in you.
You emanate all that is somehow,
left unsaid... with not quite words.
Yet, in this essay, in this sad effort,
within a world as meditation,
I always see you; the mind’s mirror
freezing your reflection–
perhaps, the reader sees?