Sonnet LXXXVIII

The mornings I’m alone and aching,

resplendent-mouthed and open-skinned,

the lashing rain is flung, retaking

the earth in fits of fickle wind.

And silence in the autumn hallways

is warm, expansive, safe as always,

a living thing that fills to blur

the corners with its fluffy fur.

The air is cold behind my shoulders

and underneath my sinking breasts

and on my thighs, presenting tests

that prove my bones as dense as boulders

and force my innards to revive:

I am alive, alive, alive.

Значение имени

In Moscow, on the street
one Sunday between
the pale tubes of neon lights, recently extinguished, and
the rhinoceros-guarded façade of
a gentlemen's club,
a young woman I have not met since asked me, "и ты --
как тебя зовут?"

and I answered truthfully.
"--Красивое," she said, her eyes
breathing, her mouth
open like a split fruit, "как песня, ты
песня, песня--да?"

"Ну да," I said, tilting my eyes down, down
to her split-fruit mouth in
surprise--
"как песня."

Как песня--я песня,
народная песня,
рождественская песня,
старая, святой песня,
запрещённая, так же,
как все суеверные, красивые лжи запрещённые--

and in the wet breaths of her eyes were
древние крестьяне,

крестьяне, которые танцуют по кругу,
забытый хоровод,
француженки с толстыми косами и
молодие люди;
томятся; ищут любви.
В глазах были карие глаза, светлые волосы,

тысячу лет назад,
в то время, которая мир забыл,
в стране, которой язык уже не говорят.

In her small, plump face, turned up at me, I
could read that her "Красивое" was
earnest, that her breaths were
alive, that песня meant something
big, bigger than a continent, as big as
history, and imagine
my astonishment--
because in English, all it means is

me