Then there is the clock's
commentary, the continuing
prose that is the under-current
of all poetry. We listen
to it as, on a desert island,
men do to the subdued
music of their blood in a shell.
Then take my hand that is
of the bone the island
is made of, and looking at
me say what time it is
on love's face, for we have
no business here other than
to disprove certainties the clock knows.
by R. S. Thomas
from Experimenting with an Amen (1986)
Black as the pupil of an eye, sucking at light
like the pupil of an eye, I love you, far-sighted night.
Give me the voice to sing of you, godmother of every hymn,
you in whose hand lie the brindles of the four winds.
Calling on you, extolling you, I am no more than
a shell where the sea-swell goes on roaring.
Night! I have looked long enough into human eyes.
Now, emblaze me, make ash of me, black-sun-night!
by Марина Ивановна Цветаева (Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva)
(1916)
translated by Robert Chandler
