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Lydia Grigorieva

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Polar Day

I wanted to turn the sky over,
like a little hand-made carpet
onto its right side, where the stars were,
so that the thick tundra grasses
would lie on the vault of the sky
in constellations of heavenly forget-me-nots.
And I was five years old.
I, like a kitten, was beginning to see the light.
I looked hungrily
at all surrounding life.
Free to wish for the impossible . . .
The weeping Maiden leaned down from the heavens.
My beautiful, young mother
waited for my father,
laughed,
sang songs.
She went into the tundra to gather flowers.
And she had other cares too:
to love me,
to shake out
the hand-made carpet,
but not to shake off the stars.
The starry sky lay in our house
at no distance at all.
While father flew over the ocean
with its unthawing, blue-black ice –
the constellations of the heavenly forget-me-nots
went up into the vault of heaven into the polar day,
so as to shine in the yawning emptiness.
Father knew how to work out his way home
by the stars.
And mother knew how to wait.

Translated by Richard McKane

Page(s) 146-147

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