it is next to impossible
to
hear them,
and most of them speak languages
for which no Rosetta stone can be found-
but listen harder, use your imagination ...
the people at the other end of the telescope,
are they trying
to
tell you their names?
yes, surely that must be it, their names
and those of those they love, and possibly
something else, some of them ... listen ...
the largest are struggling to explain
what befell them, how it happened
that they woke one morning as if adrift,
their moorings cut in the night,
and were swept out over the horizon,
borne on an ebbing tide and soon
to be discernible only as distance,
collapsed into mirage, made to become
legendary creatures now off every map .
MARINA TSVETAEVA
554
Longing for the motherland!
A mystery I demystified long ago!
It is totally the same to me–
where I am-totally alone.
Along which stones I drag myself,
with my shopping bag, home.
A house unaware of who I am,
like some hospital or barrack.
It's all the same whom I defy
as I bristle like a caged lion,
from which coterie of men
I'm expelled-without fail-
