“How is your life with the other one,
Simpler isn’t it?One stroke of the oar
Then a long coastline,and soon
Even I memory of me
Will be a floating island
( In the sky ,not the waters)
Spirits, spirits you will be
Sisters and never lovers”
I curse you Marina*
Because of the honesty
In everything you wrote
And how your eyes look
Like hers..
Those eyes and a continent keeps
Us apart..
I curse you because your name
Is the almost the same as the one
who just left..
A blouse half undone
Balled up stockings in side pockets
Unmade bed
Incomplete raft for a desire
I gag on the remains of her perfume
Pull the window up to let
In clean air…
And toxic language out
Fill a glass with whisky
Fall drunk between the pages of an
Open book
Down headfirst into the wings
Of a chapter
Pages flap open heavy with words.
Stories unread spill out
An architecture of denial
Built around us..
Crumbles to dust
Is this drunkenness or fever?
That grips me
Or your open arms..
Slammed shut and bolted tight
That numbs my senses
Because
No going back
Silence is our only bond.
You fled the room
Leaving the ivory comb clogged
with long back hair…
A make- up bag overflowing
The mirror dazed by your
Reflection
Sheds an image –
Light of a ghost passing?
I’m so tired of the failure of this
love…
Confusing our love for the poetess
In Russia
Beloved Marina
And your two similarities
And the real you
Living at the foot of a Swiss mountain
Pilatus
Overlooking
Lake Luzern
Sat on the doorstep writing poems
For the world to read.
Love and cherish
While the coffee goes cold
It’s as if in a miracle both persons
Could fuse into one.
Soundlessly
Like snow dissolving on the lake
Or mountain mist unfurling then
Disappearing between the pines.
Is this how love disappears?
.
Malcolm Paul
* Marina Tsvetayeva
Russian Poet 26 September 1892- 31 August 1941
.