Ruth St. Denis
TO ANNA AKHMATOVA
—Alexander Blok
I sent you a rose in a glass of champagne
while the gypsies played as the gypsies do.
Then you turned to the man you were with and said:
"You see his eyes? He's in love with me too."
That night you left me a look in the mirror—
a look I've had too much of.
And the gypsy singer kept jangling her bracelets
and singing of love, and of love, and of love.
______________________
Why don't you look at me, don't you love me?
You bastard, you really are beautiful
And I'm hooked. I can't fly away
The way I've always been able to do.
I get dizzy just looking at you, everything
blurs. There's only a single thing I can see:
The silly red tulip
stuck in your lapel.
—Anna Akhmatova
______________________
No, I won't go have a drink with you.
You're a very bad boy. And you're crazy.
I know all about you—you'd do it
with anyone you met by moonlight.
Thank God we live
a quiet life nowadays.
Nobody tells us to look
into beautiful eyes.
—Anna Akhmatova
______________________
LOT'S WIFE
—Anna Akhmatova
The righteous man followed God's luminous angels
And hurried after them over the hill.
But his wife heard an anxious voice that whispered:
"It isn't too late, not yet; you can still
Look back at the towers of the town you came from,
At the street where you sang and the room where you spun,
At the empty windows of the house you cared for
and the bed where all your children were born."
And of course she looked back. She felt a quick pang
And then everything ended. Her eyes closed
And her body dissolved into bitter crystals.
Her small feet stopped and grew into the ground.
No one seems to have mourned this woman;
She was only a minor event in the book.
But my heart holds fast to her memory;
A woman who gave up her life for a look.
____________________
Why is this age worse than all the others? Perhaps
in this: it has touched the point of putrefaction,
Touched it in a rush of pain and sorrow,
But cannot make it whole.
In the west the familiar light still shines
And the spires of cities glow in the sun.
But here a dark figure is marking the houses
and called the ravens, and the ravens come.
—Anna Akhmatova
____________________
This is the moment they told us would come some day
when there's nobody left alive to hear what we say.
The world is no longer the place it used to be.
Be still, don't break my heart. Be silent, poetry.
—Anna Akhmatova
(Today's poetry is from The Stray Dog Caberet from New York Review Books, translated by Paul Schmidt.)
____________________
Anna Akhmatova would've been 118 years old today.
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)
SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:
Journals (free publications): Rattlesnake Review14 is now available at The Book Collector; contributors and subscribers will receive theirs in the next couple of weeks. If you're none of those, and can't get down to The Book Collector, send two bux to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you a copy. Next deadline, for RR15, is August 15. VYPER6 (for youth 13-19) is in The Book Collector; next deadline is Nov. 1. Snakelets10 (for kids 0-12) is also at The Book Collector; next deadline is October 1.
Books/broadsides: June's releases include Tom Miner's chapbook, North of Everything; David Humphreys' littlesnake broadside, Cominciare Adagio; and #3 in B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series, this one featuring Jane Blue.
ZZZZZZZ: Shh! The Snake is sleeping! There will be no Snake readings/releases in July or August. Then we return with a bang on September 12, presenting Susan Kelly-DeWitt's new chapbook, Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree. See the online journal, Mudlark, for a hefty sample of poems from her book; that’s http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/. Also coming in the Fall: new issues of the Review, Snakelets and VYPER [see the above deadlines], plus more littlesnake broadsides from NorCal poets near and far, and a continuation of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series—including an anthology of interviews to be released for Sacramento Poetry Month (October).
—Alexander Blok
I sent you a rose in a glass of champagne
while the gypsies played as the gypsies do.
Then you turned to the man you were with and said:
"You see his eyes? He's in love with me too."
That night you left me a look in the mirror—
a look I've had too much of.
And the gypsy singer kept jangling her bracelets
and singing of love, and of love, and of love.
______________________
Why don't you look at me, don't you love me?
You bastard, you really are beautiful
And I'm hooked. I can't fly away
The way I've always been able to do.
I get dizzy just looking at you, everything
blurs. There's only a single thing I can see:
The silly red tulip
stuck in your lapel.
—Anna Akhmatova
______________________
No, I won't go have a drink with you.
You're a very bad boy. And you're crazy.
I know all about you—you'd do it
with anyone you met by moonlight.
Thank God we live
a quiet life nowadays.
Nobody tells us to look
into beautiful eyes.
—Anna Akhmatova
______________________
LOT'S WIFE
—Anna Akhmatova
The righteous man followed God's luminous angels
And hurried after them over the hill.
But his wife heard an anxious voice that whispered:
"It isn't too late, not yet; you can still
Look back at the towers of the town you came from,
At the street where you sang and the room where you spun,
At the empty windows of the house you cared for
and the bed where all your children were born."
And of course she looked back. She felt a quick pang
And then everything ended. Her eyes closed
And her body dissolved into bitter crystals.
Her small feet stopped and grew into the ground.
No one seems to have mourned this woman;
She was only a minor event in the book.
But my heart holds fast to her memory;
A woman who gave up her life for a look.
____________________
Why is this age worse than all the others? Perhaps
in this: it has touched the point of putrefaction,
Touched it in a rush of pain and sorrow,
But cannot make it whole.
In the west the familiar light still shines
And the spires of cities glow in the sun.
But here a dark figure is marking the houses
and called the ravens, and the ravens come.
—Anna Akhmatova
____________________
This is the moment they told us would come some day
when there's nobody left alive to hear what we say.
The world is no longer the place it used to be.
Be still, don't break my heart. Be silent, poetry.
—Anna Akhmatova
(Today's poetry is from The Stray Dog Caberet from New York Review Books, translated by Paul Schmidt.)
____________________
Anna Akhmatova would've been 118 years old today.
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)
SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:
Journals (free publications): Rattlesnake Review14 is now available at The Book Collector; contributors and subscribers will receive theirs in the next couple of weeks. If you're none of those, and can't get down to The Book Collector, send two bux to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you a copy. Next deadline, for RR15, is August 15. VYPER6 (for youth 13-19) is in The Book Collector; next deadline is Nov. 1. Snakelets10 (for kids 0-12) is also at The Book Collector; next deadline is October 1.
Books/broadsides: June's releases include Tom Miner's chapbook, North of Everything; David Humphreys' littlesnake broadside, Cominciare Adagio; and #3 in B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series, this one featuring Jane Blue.
ZZZZZZZ: Shh! The Snake is sleeping! There will be no Snake readings/releases in July or August. Then we return with a bang on September 12, presenting Susan Kelly-DeWitt's new chapbook, Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree. See the online journal, Mudlark, for a hefty sample of poems from her book; that’s http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/. Also coming in the Fall: new issues of the Review, Snakelets and VYPER [see the above deadlines], plus more littlesnake broadsides from NorCal poets near and far, and a continuation of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series—including an anthology of interviews to be released for Sacramento Poetry Month (October).