‘To Fall Ill As One Should…’ by Anna Akhmatova

To fall ill as one should, deliriously

Hot, meet everyone again,

To stroll broad avenues in the seashore garden

Full of the wind and the sun.

 

Even the dead, today, have agreed to come,

And the exiles, into my house.

Lead the child to me by the hand.

Long I have missed him.

 

I shall eat blue grapes with those who are dead,

Drink the iced

Wine, and watch the grey waterfall pour

On to the damp flint bed.

 

– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1922)

– from Anno Domini MCMXXI translation by D. M. Thomas

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The Sundial by Gillian Clarke

Owain was ill today. In the night

He was delirious, shouting of lions

In the sleepless heat. Today, dry

And pale, he took a paper circle,

Laid it on the grass which held it

with curling fingers. In the still

Centre he pushed the broken bean

Stick, gathering twelve fragments

Of stone, placed them at measured

Distances. Then he crouched, slightly

Trembling with fever, calculating

The mathematics of sunshine.

 

He looked up, his eyes dark,

Intelligently adult as though

The wave of fever taught silence

And immobility for the first time.

Here, in his enforced rest, he found

Deliberation, and the slow finger

Of light, quieter than night lions,

More worthy of his concentration.

All day he told the time to me.

All day we felt and watched the sun

Caged in its white diurnal heat,

Pointing at us with its black stick.

 

by Gillian Clarke

from The Sundial (Gwasg Gomer, 1978)

Whale by Christopher Isherwood

He’s trying desperately, this whale,

To put his head beneath his tail.

He’s frightened because someone’s told

Him that his stomach’s turning to gold –

And as you know, with whales and weasels,

When one turns gold, he’s got the measles.

As a matter of fact, our friend has not.

He’s only slipped on a treacle-pot

Dropped from the deck of a submarine

By the cabin-boy, who was feeling green.

 

– by Christopher Isherwood