To the Meyerholds
Now the corridors’ gutters have dried
And the roar has rolled back, to abate.
At the window, too late for the show,
The storm knits a stocking from flakes.
Lie in hiding backstage, in your lair.
Getting blackened in everyone’s sight,
Like a fool I shall come to your door
At the interval, speechless and shy.
I shall see roofs and trees, I shall gaze
At where beauty spots whirl into space.
And from winter’s behaviour – that traipse –
I’ll learn how you play cat-and-mouse.
I shall say: that your pouts and your scowls
Almost shattered me, down in the stalls,
That the parcel got soaked, came unstrung,
But I’ll bring you another one soon,
That on earth there’s no rescue from thrall,
That my hands bring the foyer’s applause,
And that these declarations are all
For you both, yet the best of them – hers.
How I love your disorder, your lope,
Avid grey in your shock of wild hair.
Well, if you’ve played your way into this,
Then you’re right, it’s the right way to play.
Once a certain archgifted director
Played so well to the young earth like that
That as spirit he moved on the waters,
Then rubbed at a rib he had snapped,
And pushed through into world from a random
Arrangement of planets and moon
To lead out an artiste by her trembling
Hand to her fateful début.
In that same unrepeatable play
As if breathing the odour of kohl,
You rubbed your whole self out – to take
On the make-up whose name is the soul.
Translated by Angela Livingstone
Page(s) 114-115
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- 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
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- 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
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The