The Bird

[olshananaeva]

(by Jane Batischeva)

That’s only one thing I kept –
To breeze my poems in,
To breeze my air out,
The air that has got warm now.
I’m a deaf-mute in disguise,
Humming to myself about distant stars,
With my eyes sinking in the sky behind bars –
Oh, my song is about those pale stars
who, like us,
are so fragile…

- That’s only one thing I kept –
The drafts. The silent wind in the oak’s crown.
Willow twigs – all that remains of an ancient cage
Of the tame, fed-by-hand bird of my own.
Silence reigns in the garden of night –
It is not impossible that
I can tame the most distant star
Feeding her by my bird’s bread.


(Penticost, 2011)