Sunday, December 22, 2013
to the poet Sofiya Yuzefpolskaya-Tsilosani
My Russian doesn't exist,
so I translate you via Bing.
The results are like the fog
obscuring a stand of birches.
But enough comes through --
symbols stark with a looking
toward the spirits of things
and spaces of great silence
where memory can breathe
and gone poets still speak.
So many living poets are writing
and writing and writing and writing.
So few of their poems are haunted
by peculiar ghosts clinging to stones
in lost winter streams or vivifying
washed shirts and trousers that swirl
passionately on a summer clothesline.
Some days it's very hard to believe
we're bound for graves and nothing.
I somehow think I'll hear your voice
as the blue beneath auras of music,
like a candle flame lighting a dream
of tales told once upon a time.
~ TB, 2013
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It is quietly thrilling to observe one living poet's tribute to another.
ReplyDelete(I meant to add, "and a privilege", but could not manage to edit the comment.) With a delicate touch, and in a flash of blue fire, you capture the spirit of Yuzefpolskaya-Tsilosani's poems and then release it; the reader is then left wondering and musing upon the colors of your voice.
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