Poems Archives - ninakossman

* * *

Nina Kossman — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 20:19:50 +0000

First, you sell your time.
(This is called “earning a living.”)
Then you sell your ideas.
(This is called “being famous.”)
Then you sell your house.
(This is called “moving up”.)
Then you sell your wife of twenty five years.
(This is called “a midlife crisis.”)
Then you sell your old books.
(This is called “becoming a real Buddhist.”)
Then you sell your old friends.
(This is not called anything special.)
Then you sell your old clothes.
(This is called “crossing the threshold” or simply “poverty”.)
Then you sell your conscience.
(“But, ma’am, we don’t use this word here…”)

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* * *

Nina Kossman — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 20:12:02 +0000

You are a force
deep inside me
that doesn’t know my name.

(See me throw it into the fire.)

That, deaf to my entreaties,
wouldn’t rescue me
from a burning house.

(See me throw it into the sea.)

That wouldn’t save me
if I were drowning.
And if I drowned, it would drown too.

(See me throw it into a forest.)

That wouldn’t look for me
if I were lost in a forest.
(If I were lost, it would be lost with me.)

See me throw it back into me:

How you dissolve, how you melt away,
no longer a force,
just a dead man’s soul.
____________________

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Nina Kossman — Sun, 11 Aug 2019 21:42:57 +0000

Сейчас откроется дверь,

и тот, кто умер, войдёт.

– Вот и я! Верь-не верь! –

и всю ночь напролёт –

Не верю! – кричу в темноту.

– Не верить легче, чем верить.

Я: – Не пори ерунду.

Труднее не верить.

…….

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Marina Tsvetaeva ( Translated from the Russian by Nina Kossman)

babini — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:07:05 +0000

Marina Tsvetaeva
English translations copyright (c) 1998
Poem of the End (Ardis, 1998), 190 pp.
ISBN: 0-87501-112-8

Marina Tsvetaeva
						Translated from the Russian by Nina Kossman
		
		The Lord has rewarded me
		With a light-filled and iron heart.
		With a gift of singing, a tearful gift.
				
		The Lord has protected me
		With a white flag.
		The Lord has passed me by
		With the carnal flame.
		
		Hold higher the flag!				
		The Lord above us!
		Heavier than stone--
		The carnal flame!
		
		May 1918
				
		__________________________________________________________

						Marina Tsvetaeva
						Translated from the Russian by Nina Kossman
		
		
		I said, and another heard,
		Whispered to a third, who understood,		
		And the fourth, taking his oak staff,
		Went into the night--to a heroic deed. 			
		The world made a song of it, and with that
		Song on my lips--O life!--I meet my death.
		
		6 July 1918
		__________________________________________________________

						Marina Tsvetaeva
						Translated from the Russian by Nina Kossman
		
		
		TO GENIUS
		
		They christened us in the same tub,
		They wed us with the same wreath,
		They tortured us in the same jail,
		They branded us with the same iron.
		
		They will build us the same house.
		They will cover us with the same mound.
								
		5 August 1918
		__________________________________________________________

						Marina Tsvetaeva
						Translated from the Russian by Nina Kossman
								
		My light tread
		--A sign of clear conscience--
		My light tread,
		My ringing song--
		
		God placed me alone
		In the midst of the great world.
		--You are not a woman but a bird,
		Therefore--fly and sing.
		
		19 October 1918

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A bomb said to a city:

babini — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:05:54 +0000

                 A bomb said to a city:
		"I'm falling."
		
		The city asked:
		"Whose side are you on?"
		
		The bomb said:
		"I take no sides. I'm falling."			
		
		The city said: 
		"Look around you."			
		
		The bomb said:
		"Too late."	
					
		The city did not say anything.

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IN HIS FINAL DREAM

babini — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:04:56 +0000

		The stronger evidence of a cloud which carried him
		into the paper-strewn lot of a magnified dream
		no longer his own, no longer here, no longer alive,
		as it was when it used to entrap him. As it was,
		it was no longer a cloud that carried him.
		He, on a string of his dream, carried it,
		and no longer to a place of exact destination
		where purpose bloomed darkly, its petals lips 
		to feed the desire of morning air, the final air
		in the final dream, where he himself was the cloud.
		Or, he was what he was. The desireless shadow,
		proudly calm, proudly insouciant
		at desire's death. He dropped it off like a coat,
		this second skin, this disease, this signifier
		of the serene and the feverish, 
		the true and the false--the prevailing guile.
		His confusion resolved and his purpose realized:
		he in the sky, he sans his cloud, he sans his human shell.

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HOW CASSANDRA BECAME CLAIRVOYANT

babini — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:04:27 +0000

"Wishing to gain Cassandra's favors, Apollo
promised to teach her the art of prophecy; she learned
the art but refused her favours; hence Apollo deprived
her prophecy of power to persuade."
Apollodorus, The Library, III.xii.5 (tr. J. G. Frazer)

HOW CASSANDRA BECAME CLAIRVOYANT

So. You are Apollo. Well, that's a new one.
As good a line as any to get a girl.

A godhead must be like a flowering tree,
open in every pore. But you
are closed in upon yourself.

Devious god, I see right through you.
You guard the image that protects the space
in which you hide, aloof and conscious godhead.

Grant you your desire?
But I'm only an image in your dream,
an inverse reflection of yourself,
a bit of instinct, a bit of soil...

Love you?
Foolish god, I'm a mortal girl,
I cannot love a consciousness,
perfection of a mind that is god.
Besides, I'm not a starry-eyed virgin from a story-book,
although I may look like one to you
as I stand here discoursing with an emptiness,
the disembodied space that claims to be a god.

We trade?...
Lord of the lyre, master of song, lord of prophecy,
king of praise and of timely whispers,
prove now that you are you,
and not an empty cloud begging for a shape.

My wish?
To have the future at my fingertips!
To have the power of your priestesses, Apollo,
but without the laurel-chewing nonsense, if you please:
I'd get a headache from all the chewing.
Measure the price of my body in prophecy:
how many foresights am I worth? Ah! Now!...

Grant you your desire?
Now that I am a goddess as much as you are a god?
Who do you think you are kidding, lover?
The scales of the future are eloquent, delicate, quick.
A kiss, only one, don't ask for more.
I must go. To Troy, to tell them.
I owe you nothing, lord of good manners,
god of frost and diluted dreams.

Back to your void, Apollo.

(originally published in GODS AND MORTALS: MODERN POEMS ON CLASSICAL MYTHS, Oxford University Press, 2001)

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JUDAS’ REPROACH

babini — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:03:28 +0000

"... he was troubled in spirit, and testified, 
				and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
				that one of you shall betray me. Then the disciples looked 
				one on another, doubting of whom he spake.  He then lying 
				on Jesus' breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it? Jesus 
				answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have 
				dipped it. And when he  had dipped the sop, he gave it to 
				Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.  And after the sop Satan 
				entered into him.... He then having received the sop went out 
				immediately out: and it was night."	
						John 13:26-27 (King James Version)

			
		JUDAS' REPROACH

		Handing me the bread
		dipped in the dish--
		not saying.

		It was your look.
		In your hand:
		my shame.

		Judas the faithless,
		Judas the weak,
		eternally.

		Forever to regret
		not saying
		"I will not touch this sop."


(originally published in GOSPELS IN OUR IMAGE, a Harcourt Brace anthology edited by David Curzon)

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DAPHNE HERSELF

babini — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:01:53 +0000

		I will grow myself quiet leaves
		in the diffiicult silence of chastity.

		I will hide in the immense namelessness
		though each tree murmurs to him my name.

		I am the bed of leaves he can never scorch,
		not even with his eyes of fire.

		I am the naked face of the flower; a cross.
		He cannot escape by reaching me.

		The god and the goal; the lover and the loved;
		the pursuit and the flight, entwined.

		Though a god, he will die in the depths of my bark.
		I will glisten his face on my leaves.

		Every eagle will have his eyelids.
		Every event--his speed.

		Each one of the thousand suns
		will pursue me as he has chased.

		Each one of the symbols of silence
		will learn his name I refuse to bear.

		I am he: the sun, its immense bowl
		pouring out selves as from a fount of chastity.

		He is I: the ever-green song in flight,
		the sun forever pursuing me.

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See how nothing keeps out of Pluto’s gorge

babini — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:01:28 +0000

                See how nothing
		keeps out of Pluto's gorge,
		silently drifts
		towards it, waits, sinks
		into the thickening dark,
		the unreflecting water,
		grave made of mud and stones:
		this way--to hide lizard shadows,
		here--to rob of flesh;
		though mercy's an unprofitable profession,
		save me from too much death.

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