hammers & bells - 2013

Cold War, 1966 

Wind.
Hot.
Flat.

A single reed,                               
I stand and stare:
an air raid siren’s
gaping mouth
looms high above my summer prairie afternoon.                            

I listen
for its promise
to split my life in two.

In passing: leaves

Autumn leaves
like small and sail-less boats unmoored
freed from the bondage of choice
drift
then land with a tender click
one by one by one.

And lying loose upon the road
clatter somersaults of joy
in the wake of someone’s passing.

In the wake
of my own
I should wish it known:

There were times when I heard
a stadium roar
in those somersaulting leaves,
there were times when my spirit rode in flight
their falling, golden light.

And there were times,
in the sound of a loved one
opening, closing, the back home door
when I was dwelling
wholly on the side of life.

My language

Is blue,
a country
of snowflakes. 

I watch them,
from my window at night
hurtling directly
at the cross-hairs of vision
rushing
past streetlights
all lined in a row. 

How those street lights form
a snow beam binding
lamp-head to lamp-head
their long necks bent
like swans without wings
quietly stirred
to strain at the earth.

Echo from St. Andrew’s 

Black the winged raven swoops
above the forest stark.
Cold on rowing boat the Dnieper
sprays at thrusting hand. 

An echo, ringing, iron wrought,
is squeezing at the heart
and all its chambers, lonely, dark. 

It’s loose upon the sleeping city,
knocking at closed doors,
terrible as an army
with banners, on campaign;
a host of candles searching
rooms with singing flame;
a raging flood that pours itself
like wine at sleeping lips

already known
to sparrows, pigeons, poplar,
the willow at water’s edge.
Already known
to snowflakes
in quiet labour stretching
everything they touch –
water, wood, the bones of dreams –
upward, into towers. 

Now! Take to that ancient shore!
Take your shivering courage and run
up that hill of cobblestone steps,
the Borichev descent,
to heave with all your might!
To burn the silver, three-fold cord
between your trembling hands! 

Break the binding night!
Break the binding night! 

And from across the river hear
How many of us
in all our mad ricocheting
still sound
off the same absent bell.

 (translated by Alisa Ganieva and published in the Moscow daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 2015)