Angels considered as projected images of the soul.
A little flighty firebird, elusive.
Your quiddity.
That we live in a Byzantine, wooden-icon reality?


Here's an untitled poem by Elena Shvarts, translated (probably mistakenly) by me :


Why, here in this dust,
don't I say "you" and "I"?
A bit of flint given life
gleams dimly out of death.
When light blazed near
I might have dared the sun,
crying - Burn me, dear!
You - my body! Here I am!
But I'm no windmill
and he's grinding me already -
my landlord, shrouded
beneath this decaying shell.

1996

[I remember her telling me in Hoboken once how interested she was in Baudelaire.]