Translation
In one translation of Akhmatova
a few early snowflakes blow in the wind
barely, barely
in another
same wind, same early flakes, only
lightly, lightly
was she thinking about winter, or
the stranger at the door?
it matters that water never stopped moving
beneath the frozen canals
and lips that barely brushed hers
were not the ones she lightly kissed.
Violet-green swallow
So this is what
it's like ---
feint, tilt
swoop
and glide ---
to return as bird
and not some other creature
finned or clawed.
Too quick for my shadow ---
above the trees
I return
as
script
Acknowledgements
i.
A nod to yellow
for being
only a slash
on the blackbird's shoulder patch
for its sensitivity to its brothers and sisters
of colour
---
giving the whole sky over to blue
and for holding back the bloom, dipping first in the font
of baptismal
green ---
for being the colour of childhood, the primary
building block of memory,
a notepad
on the desk,
liver's foot soldier.
And a nod for what it isn't ---
somber, melancholic, a wallflower at the school dance,
the
code in the hospital nobody knows
red for fire; blue for cardiac arrest
yellow for disaster?
Hardly -
think daffodils, dandelions,
sunflowers;
think
red bird singing
in a
golden cage ---
scythe arching across the sky.
ii.
Thanks to working titles: discarded, dumped,
delayed
---
for disappearing without a fuss, for being
frame, scaffolding, the one bowl big enough
to hold the fruit.
Thanks for never raising your eyebrows,
content
to be
the dark mold and not the silver cast;
thanks for Starlight, Wild Music, Drift and Otium,
for Third Floor Lounge, Late Night Reconnoiter
and
Imperishable Things,
for your adamant refusal to be Unknown -
and
never asking
"What were you thinking?"
thanks for shrugging your shoulders
and just
getting on with it.
