Svetlana Kekova
Already, no more suffering, no
Already, no more suffering, no
more speech nor space nor time.
In the city of Bremen, only music
still survives, and light.
Over the bakery, a pretzel gleams,
summing up foolish life,
and in the dark of midnight
a repulsive white flower blooms.
Dusty brakes of yellow acacia
clustered around an empty platform
revealed the law of gravity,
but its effect on the spirit was slight.
Life should not slip away like dross.
Again you climb the hill, but
the faces ripped open like bellies
disclose only the viscera of clocks.
We die, we sleep and eat,
weep loudly, form words
and pursue certain ends,
with no idea of what it’s all about.
The fir-tree branches flutter
in a dazzle of eyelashes,
and round-headed nurslings of death
materialise in the maternity wards.
No more honey, hops or malt,
no burning water, no fire.
The blasted gold cavorts across the sky,
in too much of a hurry.
You’ll break the moon like crockery
and, approaching old age, learn how
to persecute those irrepressible Jews.
So your youthful days return.
How the winged horses clip-clopped
over the hot paving stones of the bridge.
We saw Mandelstam, or Blok,
head bowed, walking off
into inordinately deep air-pockets,
where words echo death’s knell,
where your disobedient golden head
still seems to be alive
Translated by Ruth Fainlight
Page(s) 90-91
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Borderlines
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- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
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- Fabric
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- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
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- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
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- Yellow Crane, The