Three Poems - Anna Malihon
3.
She was a complete scatterbrain
Everything she held fell from her hands
And she had a memory like a butterfly’s
A thought in, a thought out.
She only remembered the path to work and back well
It was as if she had grown up there herself – in her own greenhouse
There she would never forget them – the azaleas, orchids, Chinese fici, and also –
The cypresses and violets, her beautiful children, she adopted their language
That’s why she was usually silent
Hey you, cried a gypsy boy with a jaw harp up his sleeve – redhead, buy some music, it’s classic
I’ll let you have it at a bargain price,
Do you hear me, red head…
She turned around, looked unblinking into his eyes and he moved away.
She took out her notebook, where she carefully wrote down the names of the stars
Everyday new and different stars, in the morning she learned them, by evening she forgot them
She ran to the flowers again, not waiting for them to grow, again her gypsy boy with the jaw harp teased
You somehow had the opportunity to be a dancer in another world…
“Well, they won’t value you there – they told her!
It’s enough for you to pull your weeds!”
“Where? And who will replant the cactuses? And the lemons will become entangled?
Until then I have the inclination to dance…”
She would have lived happily this way, but suddenly she lost her journal…
And the stars chaotically scattered, not one was caught in the sieve of memory…
They left cold splashes on remaining timid hopes
Someone likes you, the red butterfly in the greenhouse
She holds a place for you there, up high
And you will still shine to yours
The jaw harp trembles strangely, as if the musician
Has learned something…
5.
The unopened fist of a tulip
In a Pepsi bottle
Grew still, won’t give away
Its secret light to anyone…
Like the way someone plucked us before our blossoming,
Lost, resold, forgotten at stations
And we now are in different rooms, buildings, cities.
Writing the same fate,
Lit with an inner light.
I have a tulip in a bottle,
You have a rose in a jar
We are girls glamorous or plain
Flashes of curtailed dances
In night hallways
Not able to end this unbroken shared eternal destiny.
Remember, you promised me..?
The long shadow of a young stem…
Falls across the sleepy glass
At the same time the agate moon reveals
The cemetery of possibilities
The lovers grew tired, ate, and drank everything, and left
No one will take the flowers after them…
And I crushed you and won’t tell anyone.
***
Don't warm me, puppy. I won't get up.
Sand blew fog approached
on the right – the one who was my captain
on the left – the enemy with the son of God's face.
And life is a piece of paper with a simple code
an obscure sign near the entrance…
An umbilical chord, puppy, is like guilt.
So run, while you're still alive, while you still can, --
a new day will come and for you crumbs.
People are lethal to people, don't get used to them,
and run through three worlds to my mother…
She protected so – against chill or virus, God forbid,
she covered us at night, knitted sweaters to grow into.
But in the trenches it's cold – and everything is covered in fog.
Look, there was once a Person – now there are bones.
A messenger for everyone – a black bird…
You sigh, creature, it's really difficult
and also difficult for me to laugh…
What is life? A novella. A theme for a poem.
None of them know about gap years
or about volunteers and it's hard
after lessons to achieve wisdom.
Don't warm me, puppy. Run to your love, to the west.
It knows my scent better than you.
It puts on my tie like a noose
and ravenously, madly smokes for me.
The city is sprinkled with secrets, shadows grow.
It promises to bathe spring in chestnut foam,
if only from now on
it ceased to believe and to love.
Sometime our successors will gather here
bringing our thawed-out memories.
The dog grass-nettle will grow above the trenches,
the echo rolling across Europe.