Tag: lace

Плачущий Сад (Weeping Garden) by Boris Pasternak

 Dreadful! It drips and it listens -
 whether it's all alone in the world
 crushing a twig like lace at the window,
 or is someone watching?
 
 Palpable, though, is the pressure
 of porous earth's taut swellings,
 and far off, audible as in August,
 midnight ripens in fields.
 
 No, no sound, no witness,
 Convincing there's no one there,
 back it goes to its game of rolling
 down roofs and across gutters.
 
 I'll lift it up to my lips and listen -
 whether I'm all alone in the world,
 ready to burst out in sobs if I need to,
 or is someone watching?
 
 Silence. Not a leaf moving.
 No dot of light, just weird
 gulps and splashings about in slippers,
 the lulls full of sighs and tears.
 
 
 By  Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к (Boris Leonidovich Pasternak)
 (1917)
 translated by Angela Livingstone

A recital of the poem in Russian:

Below is the poem in it’s original Russian cyrillic form:

 
Ужасный! — Капнет и вслушается,
Все он ли один на свете
Мнет ветку в окне, как кружевце,
Или есть свидетель.

Но давится внятно от тягости
Отеков — земля ноздревая,
И слышно: далеко, как в августе,
Полуночь в полях назревает.

Ни звука. И нет соглядатаев.
В пустынности удостоверясь,
Берется за старое — скатывается
По кровле, за желоб и через.

К губам поднесу и прислушаюсь,
Все я ли один на свете, —
Готовый навзрыд при случае, —
Или есть свидетель.

Но тишь. И листок не шелохнется.
Ни признака зги, кроме жутких
Глотков и плескания в шлепанцах
И вздохов и слез в промежутке.
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‘No one will be in the house’ by Boris Pasternak

 No one will be in the house
 But twilight. Just the same
 Winter day in the gap
 The gathered curtains frame.
 
 Only swiftly beating wings
 Of white flakes as they fall.
 Only roofs and snow, and but
 For roofs and snow – no one at all.
 
 And frost again will start too sketch.
 And I again will find despairs
 Of last year whirling me back
 To another winter's affairs.
 
 And they again will sting me
 With last year's guilt, the same,
 Unexpiated. Lack of wood
 Will cramp the window-frame.
 
 Then suddenly the curtain
 Will shudder at the door
 And you will come in, like the future,
 Making no sound on the floor.
 
 And you will stand there wearing
 Something white, no lace, no braid,
 Something made from the fabric
 From which snowflakes are made.


 by  Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к
 (Boris Leonidovich Pasternak)
 (1931)
 translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France

Paramilitary Lover by Samantha Wynne Rhydderch

He strokes my neck like the barrel of a rifle

he might have killed that German with,

his boots by the door, susceptible to the cold.

I glow by the fire in tandem with

the rosewood dresser, impartial to flames,

me with a passion for granite, him

with his head shaved against the night,

shedding his armour plate by plate.

I sleep under his shield, enfolded

in an English flag I think will

become my shroud. While I thrill

among the lilies, placing a chestnut

on the grate like a move in chess,

I see the incentive of lace

defeat artillery hands down.


by Samantha Wynne Rhydderch

Interesting info: Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, sometimes referred to as S. W. Rhydderch, has published two collections, Rockclimbing in Silk (Seren, 2001), and Not in These Shoes (Picador, 2008), which was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2009.

Cardiff Elms by Gillian Clarke

Until this summer

throught the open roof of the car

their lace was as light as rain

against the burning sun.

On a rose-coloured road

they laid their inks,

knew exactly, in the seed,

where in the sky they would reach

percise parameters.

 

Traffic-jammed under a square

of perfect blue I thirst

for their lake’s fingering

shadow, trunk by trunk arching

a cloister between the parks

and pillars of a civic architecture,

older and taller than all of it.

 

Heat is a salt encrustation.

Walls square up to the sky

without the company of leaves

or the town life of birds.

At the roadside this enormous

firewood, elmwood, the start

of some terrible undoing.

 

by Gillian Clarke

from Letters from a Far Country (1982)