Where was I when I saw a wet branch against pavement worn grey
Where was I when I saw a wet branch against pavement worn grey
Or a woman with fantastic blooms on her hat selling cherries
Or a wrought iron angel above the door of a café?
Where was I when I saw?
What impossible queries!
I cannot recall dates I read carved into marble and stone
Nor hear sounds of the city that longs for my step.
It is time to go
All else I must postpone
For some night, endless years hence
When I haven’t slept.
Tears for those shores, that once cooled when sun set
And a wave kissed my hand and then died
All the roads to the moon turned the colour of jet
Yet the one that led upward stayed white.
Though the sounds from the windows came up, from the street;
Slowly voices of children and insects grew still
And it seemed that the silence was perfect, complete,
Though a trolley car whined on the hill.
Or a woman with fantastic blooms on her hat selling cherries
Or a wrought iron angel above the door of a café?
Where was I when I saw?
What impossible queries!
I cannot recall dates I read carved into marble and stone
Nor hear sounds of the city that longs for my step.
It is time to go
All else I must postpone
For some night, endless years hence
When I haven’t slept.
Tears for those shores, that once cooled when sun set
And a wave kissed my hand and then died
All the roads to the moon turned the colour of jet
Yet the one that led upward stayed white.
Though the sounds from the windows came up, from the street;
Slowly voices of children and insects grew still
And it seemed that the silence was perfect, complete,
Though a trolley car whined on the hill.
Translated by Lydia Stone
Page(s) 170
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