And what gets crystal clear is that it's dumb to grill
(turning your vocal chords into a short-wave's risen
pitch) the blue ripples perfecting their sharp-as-steel
line of the horizon.
Something bobs up in the papers - burying under their slants
the facts - driblets really. Who can crack it ...
A woman wearing brown clutches the drapes and slumps
slowly onto the carpet.
The horizon's improving. The air's filled with iodine and salt.
Far away, breakers pummel with great abandon
some inanimate object. And the bell of old
keeps tolling grimly at Lloyds of London.
(1977) Translated from the Russian
by
the Author
Alfred Corn
NEW YEAR
Another year, another return-
Each one has drawn closer to home.
A perennial naif, whose pleased
intake of breath is meant to welcome
back the urban crush, prefers
familiar brickfronts and squares
even to vistas down the proud
colonnades and quays of Paris,
mountains lost among high clouds,
or domes at dawn in the pastel east.
These westward windows, fifteenth floor,
make a triptych frame for sunset-
which shows the buildings as somehow more
