Transitions №6

Author: Evgenia Rits

Translated by Mark Wingrave

 
* * *

The peasants lead a leopard
To plough and sow the soil,
It looks like its yellow muzzle
Is black and soiled with sand.
In fact, it’s all sand-packed
Until the crack of dawn,
Where a bloody flag snaps loud
And night bursts every bubble.
«Look see» nods my neighbour
At the black flame of menfolk.
It disbanded so exactly,
Stunned us outright mute,
As its dry tongues
Flow throughout the village,
The blindly trusted beast,
Emerges from the darkness,
Finds a woolly seed,
Seeds the gory soil,
And in the fields and gardens
Rise not shoots but sunrise.
My neighbour crosses her mouth,
Slips back to her rightful hut.
Soon she’ll be at harvest. With a tuft
Of wool on an indrawn lip.

 
* * *

A friend sent me a wringing letter,
Ice-logged and shivering,
It lies here transparent
Blurring in my eyes and in plain view.
It’s so sheer I see the table and my hand,
It pains me so to chance upon its pain,
Yet I can’t pick out its pain from mine,
Like some ungrasped mystery
Some unclasped vertebrae,
All of this is vague to me.
This friend sent me no letter,
For me he is no friend or familiar,
The paper’s not covered or buried
In sand, it simply exudes
Its moisture into the air.
There it will despair me from the air,
And will unmoor me from the air
Carry me like the letters in an envelope.
Then through the paper I shall see
No longer air and not yet moisture,
But some kind of stance,
More precise a distance
From the all of me, imprinted as in icy snow,
Engulfing me in the closeness of an envelope.
Not enough of me for the darkness, no doubt,
Dear friend, on opening its gummed boundary,
Will know by the light’s swooping shadow,
This shadow is no longer all of me.

 
* * *

A rap on a tabletop:
“It’s me. Rrap-rrap.
I’m fat and flab.
I’m that.”
Sweat run hands
Drip drop drip
Doorbell like electric:
“Look, he is here”.
What’s there to see?
He writes in shadow
“yes” and “no”,
As if death weren’t forever,
As if life.
He speaks to me:
“I am your brother,
Brother- your unborn twin
A calf from a worn out herd,
You abandoned me,
As the altar burnt
Accepting gifts to heaven.
My gift was smoke,
Your gift was steam,
They turned to smog.
We’re comfy cosy,
Don’t you see?”.
What’s there to see?
I remember that day too.
Out of villages
Cities grew and grew
Not forever.
Can I recall that day?
Water layered on layer
Whistled and whirred
All hands on deck.
And then again came Thursday,
It’s true he didn’t suffer.
Today the table shook
Morse beat underneath,
A yes a no-
It’s all about him.
It’s not about me.
But I was there,
My gift was steam
Thawing out the freeze.

 
* * *

As you tie these ribbons
To your hair and your sleeve,
You smear your shying shadow
Upon the carpet’s weave.
You go unhurried. Beside you
The air is heavy and static,
Yet passing beyond the window
Mask rules are loosely observed.
The light in October heavy and damp
Won’t let you discern
That gap between a mask and face,
Half open by a third.
But you hardly glanced at the window
And turned round to yourself,
From the chair stretched out
And touched September’s cloth.
Look, look, see how it glimmers
Not reflecting one shadow’s blur
Just a dumbfounded mirror,
Orb ghosting you and her.