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Nov. 23rd, 2016 12:27 am"Pestel Street"
Tomas Venclova, tr. Diana Senechal
from Winter Dialogue
The glass reflects only dust,
Warm wine trickles
Into the hazy chalice.
The air is flavored with fading
Cupola gold in the sun.
Algae, like Cyrillic characters,
Blacken the narrow canal.
( What do you seek here, poet? )
So, uh. My Yuleswap books are here. As I told my sender, I opened the one volume to a random page—happens it was the second page of "Pestel Street"—and fell in love. I'm not sure I have enough brain to dig deeper into Venclova tonight, or begin on the other volume (which is by Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, tr. Bill Johnston), but I am gonna roll around happily in "Pestel Street" for a while. What do you seek here, poet? To change time into a stanza, to concentrate fear into meaning. (Okay, the verse I fell in love with is Lethe and the airless universe, but whatever.)
Tomas Venclova, tr. Diana Senechal
from Winter Dialogue
...a low dishonest decade...Summer submerges the city,
W.H. Auden
The glass reflects only dust,
Warm wine trickles
Into the hazy chalice.
The air is flavored with fading
Cupola gold in the sun.
Algae, like Cyrillic characters,
Blacken the narrow canal.
( What do you seek here, poet? )
So, uh. My Yuleswap books are here. As I told my sender, I opened the one volume to a random page—happens it was the second page of "Pestel Street"—and fell in love. I'm not sure I have enough brain to dig deeper into Venclova tonight, or begin on the other volume (which is by Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, tr. Bill Johnston), but I am gonna roll around happily in "Pestel Street" for a while. What do you seek here, poet? To change time into a stanza, to concentrate fear into meaning. (Okay, the verse I fell in love with is Lethe and the airless universe, but whatever.)