Poetry in translation

Poetry is lame, yes; this we know. Can't be bothered to write a melody, eh?

Anyway, that's MY stupid opinion and I must cleave to it/like a barnacle on a mighty liner/when the cold stars...what was I saying? Okay, some people, even some people I can stand, like the stuff. Fair enough.

What baffles me is the idea of poetry in translation. Especially if it's poetry that follows some conventional rhyme scheme (a/b/a/b, eg) and then STILL rhymes in the translated to English version. Huh? So all words in other language that rhyme HAPPEN to translate into words which also rhyme in other languages? And as this is a dubious probability, isn't the translator just winging it?

All translated lit freaks me out in that sense, though. Am reading an excellent book called The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig, which is translated from German. When I come across an especially vivid passage such as this,:

She tries to think, but the monotonous stuttering of the wheels breaks the flow
of her thoughts, and the narcotic cowl of sleep tightens over her throbbing
forehead - that muffled yet overpowering railroad-sleep in which one lies rapt
and benumbed as though in a shuddering black coal sack made of metal.

I then wonder how much the translator came up with on his own, and how much of the, er, poetry of the writing is the author's and how much is his interpreter's. "narcotic cowl of sleep" reads so well that it's amazing to think it could also be beautiful in exact translation. The term "railroad-sleep" is, of course, like weltschmerz, a German term that has been co-opted to English (as choochoosnoozen).

I dunno, I just think about this quite a bit.

Also, yes, Marat (pictured) was not a poet, but it gives me a chance to post this, a song I love from my ever-retreating youth (and the connection here is that the above pic is in the background on this song's source LP's cover):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8x7ip9-emE