I first read Elena Shvarts in "Paradise", a translation of selected poems published by Bloodaxe. I was intrigued to discover a Petersburg poet, coming 2 generations after Mandelstam & Akhmatova, whom one could imagine standing in kinship with them. I wrote a short poem in response, and not long after discovered that my friend Tom Epstein, a Slavist and translator, knew Shvarts personally. Tom offered to hand-deliver the poem to Shvarts on his next visit to Russia.

About 9 months later I had the opportunity to meet Elena in person, at a Russian-American poetry conference in Hoboken (an encounter described in an article in Witz). Not long after, she visited Providence, and that encounter led to 2 more short poems, which I combined with my first one in a "triptych" - a form favored by the proto-Acmeist Petersburg poet Innokenty Annensky, and his admirer Anna Akhmatova. The center poem, a take-off on Mandelstam, now seems rather campy & parodic; but I still like the 1st and 3rd sections. Here is the poem:

Triptych for Elena Shvarts


I

Some words floated toward me.
Trailed over oceans,
an ice-locked sea.
Your words, that once

ran beneath your tongue
from canvas near your heart.
(Whiff of cigarettes. Rat dung.
Wrong from the start.)

Aloft, to waver in smoke
at hobo altitude -
an image (hard to make!)
of God. In a bad mood.

Image nonetheless,
with blemishes.
And if he can lose himself
up where it vanishes,

among red leaves,
over nerve-streams,
bent, like a sheaf
in a Joseph dream. . .

I puff the mirage
back in your direction,
translated - world-image;
coracle; orb of affection.

10.4.95

II
after O.M.

I see the lame-foot masquers gathering
on a winter's night in the ancient capital.
Heirs and heiresses of royalty.
Blood of kings - and Sheba's parasol.

I hear it - midnight - toneless rumbling.
Ears razored by the rustling of ice.
So let the heart dilate. When eyes go blind
there comes a scattering of Paradise.

Golden fleece, where are you, golden fleece?
Behind the mast at an inhuman pitch
sirens weave the locks of Berenice, while
cautious Fates unbind - slowly! - the bloody stitch.

We shall be gathered with them, murmuring.
Snow will burn; offbeat hearts
rehearse sun's night. . . while stuttering
Time - Osiris, Pharaoh. . . beat a slow. . . retreat.

5.29.96

III (Sham Death of a Minor Shakespearean)


"I die for the glory of the light and
the majesty of Apollo!" - he cried
- drifting slowly, fastidiously,
to the floorboard bedside.

Head flat against the hard oak
neither he nor audience could tell
if it was by his own hand
or by another's, that he fell.

Only that the heavy thunder, the light ringing
washing through his skull was not applause,
but penetrating phantom fingers
of the black - sable - nurse of darkness.

5.27.96