Bride of Ice Read online

  Lifting my child like his own,

  look, the Rider is rising

  like the Tsar among surging clouds

  he stands, with a frown on his face.

  I saved him for you – now kill him!

  Let your love go!

  What suddenly cracked? Was it

  a dry tree? No. Two arms

  stretch toward the horse.

  A girl – has lost – motherhood.

  *

  An evil dawn through the window crack

  I dream my third dream.

  February. Crooked roads.

  The snowstorm in the fields

  sweeps across wide tracks –

  a whole tribe of winds.

  I’m hopping over a slope

  and then – up a steep mountain.

  I’m following red, a red horse.

  We are taking the same track.

  For a moment – he’s there,

  within hand’s reach and taunting:

  Touch me. My hands find

  nothing… Ahead, only horse and snow.

  Winds, pile drifts on doorways!

  cover the steep cliffs over

  so that at last the red horse

  has to stop dead in his tracks.

  *

  And now it’s not the blizzard

  but a broom sweeps me away,

  not the stroke of a sultan

  but an old hag with grey

  dishevelled hair and her nose

  deep in the steam of a cauldron.

  She has a rag in her hand,

  and a covered decanter

  with a glass, which at first

  she sets aside – then sips

  – What does it mean, my dream?

  – Your Angel doesn’t love you!

  A crack of thunder, that –

  A crowbar on the skull.

  My heads sinks into the pillow

  I repeat He doesn’t love me.

  Doesn’t love me? No need for braids, then.

  Doesn’t love me? Or a necklace.

  Doesn’t love me? I’ll mount a horse,

  and ride off into battle.

  *

  Soldiers, who are we fighting?

  A cold flame enters my chest

  like a steel lance, a light beam

  pierces under my breast.

  And he whispers I wanted this.

  It is for this I chose you,

  you are my passion, my sister,

  mine till the end of time

  my bride of ice – in armour –

  Mine. Will you stay with me

  and belong to no one else?

  With a hand on my wound, I agree.

  So – not the Muse, not the Muse.

  Not the ties of kinship which perish

  not the fetters men call friendship

  and not by a woman’s hand.

  What tightens on me is a fierce

  knot. This union frightens.

  I am in a ditch, in darkness

  even as dawn lightens.

  Who attached these heavy wings

  on my shoulders? I am

  a witness of living storm –

  someone who sees shadows,

  until I am carried high

  into the blue above us

  at last – on a red horse –

  by my own Genius!

  13–17 January 1921

  Praise to the Rich

  And so, making clear in advance

  I know there are miles between us;

  and I reckon myself with the tramps, which

  is a place of honour in this world:

  under the wheels of luxury, at

  table with cripples and hunchbacks…

  From the top of the bell-tower roof,

  I proclaim it: I love the rich.

  For their rotten, unsteady root

  for the damage done in their cradle

  for the absent-minded way their hands

  go in and out of their pockets;

  for the way their softest word is

  obeyed like a shouted order; because

  they will not be let into heaven; and

  because they don’t look in your eyes;

  and because they send secrets by courier!

  and their passions by errand boy.

  In the nights that are thrust upon them they

  kiss and drink under compulsion,

  and because in all their accountings

  in boredom, in gilding, in wadding,

  they can’t buy me I’m too brazen:

  I confirm it, I love the rich!

  and in spite of their shaven fatness,

  their fine drink (wink, and spend):

  some sudden defeatedness

  and a look that is like a dog’s

  doubting…

  the core of their balance

  nought, but are the weights true?

  I say that among all outcasts

  there are no such orphans on earth.

  There is also a nasty fable

  about camels getting through needles

  for that look, surprised to death

  apologizing for sickness, as

  if they were suddenly bankrupt: ‘I would have been

  glad to lend, but’ and their silence.

  I counted in carats once and then I was one of them.

  For all these things, I swear it: I love the rich.

  1922

  God help us Smoke!

  God help us Smoke!

  – Forget that. Look at the damp.

  These are the ordinary fears

  of anyone moving house

  approaching a poor lamp

  for students in miserable outskirts.

  – Isn’t there even a tree

  for the children? What sort of landlord

  will we have? Too strict?

  in a necklace of coins, a porter

  impervious as fate

  to the shudder in our pockets.

  What kind of neighbour?

  Unmarried? Perhaps not noisy?

  The old place was no pleasure

  but still the air there breathed

  our atmosphere, was soaked

  in our own odours. Easy,

  to put up with fetid air

  if it isn’t soiled by outsiders!

  It was old, of course, and

  rotting, but still… Not a hostel room!

  I don’t know about being born

  but this is for dying in!

  1922

  Ophelia: In Defence of the Queen

  Prince, let’s have no more disturbing

  these wormy flower-beds. Look at

  the living rose, and think of a woman

  snatching a single day – from the few left to her.

  Prince Hamlet, you defile the Queen’s

  womb. Enough. A virgin cannot

  judge passion. Don’t you know Phaedra

  was more guilty, yet men still sing of her,

  and will go on singing. You, with your blend

  of chalk and rot, you bony

  scandalmonger, how can you ever

  understand a fever in the blood?

  Beware, if you continue… I can

  rise up through flagstones into the grand bed-chamber

  of so much sweetness, I myself, to defend her.

  I myself – your own undying passion!

  1923

  from WIRES

  1

  Along these singing lines that run

  from pole to pole, supporting heaven

  I send along to you my portion

  of earthly dust.

  From wires

  to poles. This alley sighs

  the telegraphic words: I lo-o-ve

  I beg. (No printed form would

  hold that word! But wires are simpler.)

  Atlas himself upon these poles

  lowered the racetrack

  of the Gods.

  Along these files
r />   The telegraphic word: g-oo-dbye…

  Do you hear it? This last word

  torn from my throat: Forg-i-ve…

  Over these calm Atlantic fields

  the rigging holds. And higher, higher.

  All the messages fuse together

  in Ariadne’s web: Ret-u-rn…

  and plaintive cries of: I won’t leave…

  These wires are steely guards upon

  voices from Hell,

  receding… far into that distance

  still implored for some compassion.

  Compassion? (But in such a chorus

  can you distinguish such a noise?)

  That cry, arising as death comes –

  through mounds – and ditches – that last

  waft of her – passion that persists –

  Euridice’s: A-a-alas

  and not – a –

  17 March 1923

  2

  If I spoke to you directly – not like this,

  crushed into lines and rhymes –

  but from my whole heart, even Racine

  or Shakespeare could not cope with it!

  Everyone wept, with poison in their blood.

  They wept to see a snake among the roses.

  But Phaedra had only one Hyppolitus,

  and Ariadne only wept for Theseus –

  while in losing you, I have lost

  everything I love, I am adrift,

  there is no shore, no boundary to pain –

  everyone who ever lived is forfeit.

  What can I hope for now? The very air

  I breathe is so accustomed to you.

  My own bones have grown into a prison,

  lonely as Naxos – my blood is the Styx.

  Vanity! In me – and everywhere!

  To close my eyes against it has no meaning

  – since there is no daylight – and besides

  the date on the calendar is lying…

  and when you – break off like this –

  I am no Ariadne, no Phaedra.

  Only loss!

  Over which seas, in what cities

  shall I look for you? (A blind

  search for the invisible.) I must

  rely on wires, and weep at every pole.

  18 March 1923

  3

  Sorting through everything, throwing out

  whatever I can, I reject first of all

  the semaphore, that wildest discord

  – though a whole chorus rushes to the rescue,

  with sleeves like banners, still

  I throw them all out – shamelessly.

  A lyric drone of wires hums

  above as if I were in traction.

  The telegraph! Could we not communicate

  more quickly? The sky is still above us,

  a constant dispenser of emotion,

  as tangible as lips…

  The heavens arch above me

  with dawn on the horizon,

  even at this distance I can weave

  a thread to reach you.

  Across the harshest years of this epoch,

  over disgusting piles of tackle and gear,

  here fly my unpublished sighs

  my raging passions – they are

  simpler than a telegram (loyal, urgent

  even hackneyed) they will cross

  the space between us along

  these wires as gutters flood in spring.

  19 March 1923

  4

  A camp of freedom!

  Telegraph wires carry

  this cry of passion from

  my womb to the winds.

  A magnetic spark from my heart

  has torn these rhythms open:

  ‘Metre and measure?’ The fourth

  dimension announces itself!

  Hurry – over dead metres – and

  over false witness – whistling!

  Hush… when suddenly your head

  begins to ache (there are wires

  everywhere) you will recognise

  all this obscure verbiage is only

  the song of a strayed nightingale who sings

  – without the one you love the world is empty! –

  for the lyre in your hands, beloved,

  and the Leila of your lips.

  20 March 1923

  5

  Patiently, as tarmac under hammers,

  patiently, as what is new matures,

  patiently, as death must be awaited,

  patiently, as vengeance may be nursed.

  So I shall wait for you. (One look down to earth.

  Cobblestones. Lips between. And numb.)

  Patiently, as sloth can be prolonged,

  patiently, as someone threading beads.

  Toboggans squeak outside, the door answers

  Now the wind’s roar is inside the forest.

  What has arrived is writing, whose corrections

  are lofty as a change of reign, or a prince’s entrance.

  And let’s go home!

  This is inhuman –

  yet it’s mine.

  25 March 1923

  6

  At the very hour my dearest brother

  passed beyond the last elm

  (with a formal wave of the hand)

  my tears were larger than my eyes.

  In the hour when my dearest friend

  sailed round the last Cape

  (my whole being sighed: Come back!)

  and the wave of my hand stretched

  after him – from my shoulders –

  my lips – followed – entreating

  but my speech lost all sound,

  my hands lost their fingers.

  This is the hour when we approach

  with gifts – nobler than the Tsars.

  The hour when I come down the mountain.

  And the mountain understands.

  Wishes have gathered in a circle.

  Destinies have shifted. Don’t complain!

  In this hour, hands are invisible.

  And souls begin to see.

  In the hour when my dear guest

  left me – Look, look at us!

  Our tears were larger than human

  eyes – and wider than the Atlantic

  … – Stars!

  26 March 1923

  8

  Wherever you are, I can reach you

  to summon up – or send you back again!

  Yet I’m no sorceress. My eyes grew sharp in

  The white book of the distant River Don.

  From the height of my cedar I see a world

  where court decisions float, and all lights wander

  yet from here I can turn the whole sea upside down

  to bring you from its depths – or send you under!

  You can’t resist me. Since I’m everywhere

  as daylight, underground, in breath and bread

  I’m always present. That is how I shall procure

  your lips – as God will surely claim your soul –

  In your last breath, even in that choking hour

  I’ll be there at the great Archangel’s fence

  To put these bloodied lips up against the thorns

  of Judgement – and to snatch you from your bier!

  Surrender! This is no fairy tale

  Surrender! Any arrow will fall back on you.

  Surrender! Don’t you know no one escapes

  the power of creatures reaching out with

  breath alone? (That’s how I soar up

  with my eyes shut and mica round my mouth.)

  Be careful, the prophetess tricked Samuel.

  Perhaps I’ll hoodwink you. Return alone,

  because another girl is with you. Now on Judgement Day

  there’ll be no litigation. So till then

  I’ll wander. And yet I’ll have your soul

  As an alchemist knows how to win your

  lips…

  27 March 1923


  9

  Spring makes us sleepy. So let’s sleep.

  We are apart, but separation

  can be healed by sleeping. Perhaps

  we may meet each other in a dream.

  An all-seeing eye knows into whose

  hand I will next place my palm;

  to whom I will reveal this sorrow

  and share my unhappiness

  which is eternal (no child,

  no father expects it to end).

  It is the misery of those who cry,

  without a shoulder to lean on,

  about memory slipping through

  fingers, like a stone from a bridge…

  about the way all places are taken,

  all hearts already rented.

  It concerns serving – endlessly – having

  to live – without happiness –

  written off – before recognition – in archives

  – that Paradise of the crippled –

  it is about you and I, like quiet streams

  running deeper than precious metal –

  about everything stitched by a seamstress:

  drudgery – drudgery – drudgery.