6.11.2003

Here's the text in translation:

All three of my peaks glance upward;
a gentle triocular cupola is crowned;
and in sharp-edged empyreal beams
someone rotates around.

They are like three wells. . . and water
will suddenly swim to the brink of mutiny;
whenever a pail is lowered in, it must be
very carefully, very tenderly.



(I liked the way "empyreal" puns on "imperial", since this is, in a sense - if I'm right about the Streltsy theory - a meditation on the Moscow/Petersburg relationship : Petersburg the imperial western outpost, Moscow the mother-city, the home of the old religion : all of this enCAPsulated in the microcosm of the poet's trinitarian scalp. It fits well with the employment of the word "mutiny" in the 2nd stanza; also with Shvarts' famous tendency to mingle the spiritual/personal/erotic : the last stanza is somewhat "Greek" (Orthodox) in its Sapphic-erotic & concise undertones.)

"circumference" (ED via Shkspr's Head)

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