Anatoly Kudryavitsky

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Decembering Through

What kind of house do you wear
when winter falls into winter?
You wake up into a question,
but my thoughts can’t answer you
even if you are a green fish
or the Northern Lights.

Every abode is a moveable prison,
with whisper-loud walls.
“Choose your ‘I’,”
says a gamete to a zygote.
“Parlour me, you pilchard of ebony,”
says a yellow wastebin to twilight.

All the maps talk darkness. 
The absence of sun whitens the clouds,
whitens people lost to dawn, lost
to each other, wintering inside a book, 
growing a personal silence in a star-pot,
their thoughts warmed by fir-tree tea. 

Finlandia

(For Kari Klemelä)

No man can say no to snow
no woman can resist glittering crystals

The forest rests
then rusts away
Anything wet-winged, with a nocturnal voice?

“Time is hard to visualise” – lie the eyes
Something of a surprise
something of a leafy cliff
the Halti peak… is it where solitude was born?

Silence is mosquitoed and mossed
I’ve seen transparent ceilings
Sit by me, let’s marble the moon

Among the habits, helplessness
Among the bells, Sibelius
Dreams travel without
arrive within