Poetry

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

I've been reading poetry recently - firstly because I wasn't remembering what I'd read, and then waking up and remembering that I'd read the same chapter three times, I revisited 'The Mersey Sound', a book from three Liverpool poets, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, which Clare gave me and in which there are many beautiful, sad or hopeful poems.

Secondly, +seraphimsigrist has been posting the poems of Arseny Tarvosky (in translation).

Here is one I particularly liked - go read more if you also like it.


THE WAY

The black wind, like a robber,
sings in a criminal tongue.
A railway engineer is walking
Through the steppe, with a lamp ,alone.

Above the cleaving ribbon
The lamp swings in his hand
Like the beating of wings in a dream
In the dead of night on a river.

In this cradling light, this yellow,
On the edge of the universe,
I recognize my native earth
By a solitary token.

A dim prophetic summons
Is ringing down the rails
From sacred, unimagined towns
Which never sleep at night.

And carefully like an artist
The traveller follow the light
Until on the far horizon
The railwayman fades from sight.

Arseny Tarkovsky
(tr. Virginia Roundling)