Paul Klee's Boat
Soon it will be winter and soon
a nightingale with a bandaged throat,
a plum tree in bloom, and a white
hill pushed up against the door.
Illness arrives like Mozart,
sits down at the black piano
and its voice touches with a single note.
I see January, a blockade,
you're sketching Paul Klee's boat,
big on petite.
It sails along, the fool, not knowing —
can't brush the wave from its eyelash.
Somewhere a shutter bangs shut,
and you bend toward the sketch.
Mozart creates like a god!
And the two of us, childless.
We'd be husband and wife,
together forever it seemed.
But burned by Greeks and barbarians
we fled, leaving no trace.
_________________
Anzhelina Polonskaya
translated by the Russian by
Andrew Wachtel
Zephyr Press
2013
