Irina Ermakova
Gethsemane
The moon swims to the fore in the pale heavens
all god’s shrubbery illuminates
grows and blankly stares like a blind woman
at everything knowing it all by heart
Crazed of countenance
blood drained
on the dark side the other side her eyes
unsleeping shameless she is attuned
to every sound we make at the
end of time
Hearing is split and the age
like an echo
in which the clash of swords offends the ears
By feel the moon rips open
the river with finger-like rays
and dims the glare
In the sub-lunar world not a glimmer
the Kedron gushes
through sombre hills
A detachment walks by fours
A branch snaps and a different darkness tells
No time
footsteps in the garden steps
fire-flies sport above upturned faces
they cannot wake – tiredness overtook them
unseen free and easy
we sleep
– fists outstretched cruciform
side by side beneath the burning bushes
like Your first disciples
Crucified by Lunaria’s dream Gethsemenian
in Sardinia Samara in Virginia
on a motionless globe
in the second millennium
and a hollow moon
the silver coin spent
is larger than the very heavens
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
Page(s) 49-50
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