Кошка (Cat) by Inna Lisnianskaya

Where is your cat, walking
On its own,
Lapping the milky mist
Amid September?

Where its leopard tread,
Its phosphorescence,
Where is your cat and your truth
Where on this earth?

Where is the cat, still not found,
Where the roof and the leak in it?
Where is the hoarse speech
Broken by the speed of sound?

Where is your clairvoyant autumn
and corn-bins of dreams?
Where is your phosphorescent cat
and you yourself?

by Инна Львовна Лиснянская (Inna Lvovna Lisnyanskaya)
(1983)
from В пригороде Содома (In the Suburb of Sodom) / Вдали от Содома (Far from Sodom)
translated by Daniel Weissbort

.

Кошка

Где кошка твоя, гуляющая
Сама по себе,
Молочный туман лакающая
В густом сентябре?

Где поступь её леопардовая
И фосфор во мгле,
Где кошка твоя и где правда твоя
На этой земле?

Где кошка, ещё не отловленная,
Где крыша и течь?
Где скоростью звука надломленная
Охриплая речь?

Где осень твоя ясновидческая
И снов закрома?
Где кошка твоя фосфорическая
И где ты сама?

.

Additional information: Inna Lisnianskaya was the wife of Semyon Lipkin. There isn’t much about her in English so if you want to know more you may have to research her husband initially and work from there for biographical details. However one collection of her poetic works titled ‘Far from Sodom‘ is available in English should you wish to read more of her writing.

She was born in Baku and published her first collection in 1957 then moved to Moscow three years later. In 1979 she and her husband resigned from the Union of Soviet Writers in protest to the expulsion of Viktor Yerofeyev and Yevgeny Popov from it. The following seven years her works were only published abroad though from 1986 she was able to publish regularly and was awarded several important prizes.

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Threshold by R S Thomas

I emerge from the mind’s

cave into the worse darkness

outside, where things pass and

the Lord is in none of them.

.

I have heard the still, small voice

and it was that of the bacteria

demolishing my cosmos. I

have lingered too long on

.

this threshold, but where can I go?

To look back is to lose the soul

I was leading upward towards

the light. To look forward? Ah,

.

what balance is needed at

the edges of such an abyss.

I am alone on the surface

of a turning planet. What

.

to do but, like Michelangelo’s

Adam, put my hand

out into unknown space,

hoping for the reciprocating touch?

.

by R. S. Thomas

from Later Poems (1983)

Carol by R. S. Thomas

What is Christmas without
snow? We need it
as bread of a cold
climate, ermine to trim

our sins with, a brief
sleeve for charity’s
scarecrow to wear its heart
on, bold as a robin.

by R. S. Thomas
from Later Poems
(1983)

Strays by R.S. Thomas

Of all the women of the fields –

full skirt, small wasit –

the scarecrow is the best dressed.

 

She has an air about her

which more than makes up

for her loss of face.

 

There is nothing between us.

If I take her arm

there is nowhere to go.

 

We are alone and strollers

of a fine day with

under us the earth’s fathoms waiting.

 

by R. S. Thomas

from Later Poems (1983)

History by R. S. Thomas

It appears before us,

wringing its dry hands,

quoting from Nietzsche’s book,

from Schopenhauer.

 

Sing us, we say,

more sunlit occassions;

the child by the still pool

multiplying reflections.

 

It remains unconsoled

in its dust-storm of tears,

remembering the Crusades,

the tortures, the purges.

 

But time passes by;

it commits adultery

with it to father the cause

of its continued weeping.

 

by R. S. Thomas

from Later Poems (1983)