Poems
Translated by Elina Alter
* * *
That way lies
a valley, where the snow
sings, turning to roses.
I brought my hands to my eyes, to see through darkness of palms
behind the foam-white singing
a house where the dead abide, like the living.
CLOUDS IN THE ATTIC
on the second floor of the neighbors’ summer house,
where, we believed, there were deserts and seas,—
in reality are poor and unattractive rooms
under a gray sky; it’s raining in them—
tears drop from the ceiling,
and we, little prisoners, uselessly search
for the stairs to the attic beneath the roof,
where, like old pillows, lie the rainclouds.
NIGHT OF WATER AND FIRE
neither sunlight nor darkness: a strange light in the heart and green summer
summer of flight and glass, but such strange, final light,
as though everyone died in one morning, while picking lilies of the valley
and celebrating Ivanov Day, when water
joined with fire; the water spirit celebrated his birthday, lighted
wreaths floated on the river waves, the witch on her stolen horse
galloped to Bald Mountain, her hair streaming, trees crossed
from place to place, flowers gave off a scent under the pillow, I was
fire within a dream and grass in dew, a warm stove during the thunderstorm,
I saw all there is in the earth: treasures, coffins, the molten mantle
underneath which is the cannonball-core, and the atoms of dear bodies
I recognized in the veins of leaves and grasses, in transparent sparks
fluttering through the air, in the whisper of morning, as
the donkey’s head grew visible, and someone beloved and forgotten
walked to me beneath the river.
VALLEY OF WELLS
valley of wells
in a wet meadow
earthen wells
like windows into earth
formed by themselves
birds walk between them
nobody drinks from the wells
the wheel doesn’t creak
wells in earth
who has come here and why?
what should I do in the valley of wells?
different water in each of them
different innermostness
will I wander long or little
in the valley of wells
different abyss in each of them
different secret, joy, and sorrow
so many wells
opened in the earth
like the discovery
of miraculous ikons in the trunks of trees
earth’s eyes open
in her protected waters
but the air—is also water
and earth—underwater
sky, fields, and villages
I caught the bus
or maybe my mother did
and went beneath the water…
there, underwater—
valley of wells