I do not set my poems to orbit around you.
I carve a long arm out of words
To scratch an unreachable itch.
I force my breath through a broken branch
That is hollow and drilled full of holes.
I cling to the metaphor —
A slender bridge
Above a churning abyss.
What is the need for me
To spell out your name
When my moist whisper
Pours it into your ear?
Why perfume paper with words,
When, thinking “He likes coriander,”
I stretch my hand to the spice rack?
Her shadow still appears…
Anna Akhmatova
Her world is gone… But in the midnight mirror
Her presence stirs and bends the steady flame.
Her gaze meets mine. My trembling arms reach forward.
How heavy is the mantle of her name!
I sing the soaring spiral of her passion,
Whisper her terror and confess her sin.
My spirit dances, catching like a spindle
The golden thread her phantom fingers spin.
Emily Dickinson’s garden, twilight
Miss Dickinson,
Your garden is lovely in the twilight.
The oak tree by your house
Is larger and shadier
Than it was in your day.
Much has changed:
The view from your window,
The world beyond, the language.
Still, the feeling of longing
Remains the same: a long line of silk
That the soul pulls out of itself,
Like a spider spinning her thread in the autumn,
Hoping to catch not food, but the wind,
Hoping to travel far
Without knowing the destination.
«There is a poem that stalks and evades me…»
* * *
There is a poem that stalks and evades me.
I do not know its words, can't remember
Whether I read it a long time ago,
Whether it’s me who is trying to write it.
I am not sure what it is about.
I think a wolf might live in it somewhere;
I saw her tracks in the grainy snow.
I nearly glimpsed her face in the shadows
Peering at me from behind the birches.
I hear the burbling of running water
Crisscrossing the silence,
The sudden clatter
Of a woodpecker's exuberant drum roll.
I smell wet bark.
The sap must be rising.
Decay and growth are fermenting together;
It's early spring in a faraway forest.
Do not torment me like this, I beg you!
I am worn out by the chase and the longing
For that spring in that watchful forest;
For that moment when words surrender.
Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
Henry Van Dyke
Let me not be abashed by the smallness of my gift.
Let me not be stricken mute by the delight
Of soaring on the wings of a song far greater than mine,
By the breathtaking majesty of the world
