Svetlana Ivanova
Bird, start up your moan, your whine
Bird, start up your moan, your whine,
whether like a gunner’s star
or a ladder’s upward climb . . .
fish, beast, gift of a tsar.
‘Tails’ each time, and this must mean
muteness – yet do throw the coin –
I forgive you in return
for a penultimate copper tone,
and for a penultimate number,
for the sunshine trees of sleep,
all turned inside out – and steep.
So a master forgives the monkey
in its fustian cap, pell-mell
pulled behind him on a string . . .
How to guess which hand it’s in,
you, with you I cannot tell.
You’re watching me with constant eye.
Do you prophesy or call?
Count it out one final time,
Re-count, re- . . . anything at all
with a teardrop graphomanic,
with a drop of heavenly grace
and with foliage gethsemanic
over a wept and chasmic place.
Translated by Jenefer Coates
Page(s) 82-83
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