Two poems

by Olga Kolstova

Translated by Dmitri Manin

* * *

shadows creep underfoot on the ground not yet thawed from the cold

it’s the wind on the run hitting windowpanes flooded with rain

in the gunmetal glass see the negative slowly unfold

and it's snowless and bare on your heart drunk with anguish and pain

not yet spring with its muddy slush only the angleless murk

Cassian brews Märzensterben for March is already on guard

and the deacon drones on and the hanged streetlight swings with a jerk

and the joker stares out of the quads like a sharper’s marked card

never play with the devil so what if he looks like a star

throw the shawl of your sorrow my pious nun over your hair

see me dropping a penny my only one into your jar

as the blood-flooded sunset spills out on the cobblestone square

in the graveyard tombs stretch every way like the arms of a cross

and I stand in the middle where church bells incessantly chime

where I can’t see a face save the face of my twin whom I’ve lost

whose indefinite profile looms at the beginning of time

* * *

Mortal flesh has it easy; unburdened its run,

its assignment not much of a bother:

playing on, playing through till the homework is done,

because times always pass through each other,

like a drop through a drop, like the tide’s measured flow,

rainfall on the primordial flood,

light dividing itself from the darkness below,

and the Holy Ghost over the cloud.

A pink glow in the heavens portends a new dawn,

and the crescent looks sickly and spent.

On your altar a flickering candle dies down, and the veil of the temple is rent.