The Composition of Shadows (I)
by Michael R. Burch

(for poets who write late at night / by monitor light)

We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.

And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape—
curved like the heart. Here, resonant,

sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face—
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze

that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.

Published by The Lyric, Candelabrum, Triplopia, Romantics Quarterly, Iambs & Trochees, Hidden Treasures, ImageNation (UK), Yellow Bat Review, Poetry Life & Times, Vallance Review, Poetica Victorian. Keywords/Tags: writing, poetry, night, monitor, glass, phosphors, web, page, internet, online, social media, sound, files, white space

English Translations of Russian Poems by Vera Pavlova

Shattered

I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seasons

Winter―a beast.
Spring―a bud.
Summer―a bug.
Autumn―a bird.
Otherwise I'm a woman.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Pygmalion

Immortalize me!
With your bare, warm palm
please sculpt and mold my malleable snow.
Polish me until I glow.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Scales

Scales:
on the one hand joy;
on the other sorrow.
Sorrow is weightier;
therefore joy
elevates.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Muse

A muse inspires when she arrives,
a wife when she departs,
a mistress when she’s absent.
Would you like me to manage all that simultaneously?
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stone Wall

You, my dear, are my shielding stone:
to sing behind, or bash my head on.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fluttering

Remember me as I am this instant: abrupt and absent,
my words fluttering like moths trapped in a curtain.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Flight

I have been dropped
and fell from such
immense heights
for so long that
perhaps I still
have enough
time to learn
how to
fly.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

God saw
it was good.
Adam saw
it was impressive.
Eve saw
it was improvable.
—Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Three versions of Vera Pavlova's "tightrope" poem:

I test the tightrope,
balancing a child
in each arm.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I walk a tightrope,
balanced by a child
in each arm.
—Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I test the tightrope,
balanced by a child
in each arm.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Vera Pavlova is a Russian poet. Born in Moscow, she is a graduate of the Schnittke College of Music and the Gnessin Academy of Music, where she specialized in music history. She is the author of twenty collections of poetry, four opera librettos, and the lyrics to two cantatas. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker and other major literary publications. Keywords/Tags: Pavlova, Russian, translations, epigrams, woman, female, shards, seasons, scales, tightrope, child, arm, sorrow, joy, shattered, heart, broken, glass, limp, limping, barefoot, snow, sculpt, mold, polish

Sometimes I wish I was living in a big glass house
With no furniture
Just me and my glass house

I wish it was placed in a big forest
With just trees around
Just me, my glass house and a big forest

I wish nobody would visit me
Because I want to be alone
Because I’m tired of being lonely
Just me, my glass house and a big forest
Alone

I wish to die in my glass house
Surrounded by trees
Alone
So nobody could mourn my death

Let me sail away on a boat
made of soda-lime glass
Let me float out to the middle of the ocean
as a messenger in a bottle
Let me lie there
cradled in the crook of the tumultuous sea
pressing my face against the curve of the glass
watching for the glint of neon fish
and great ocean leviathans
And, when I grow bored,
let the glass of my boat fracture and shatter
and sink
to the very bottom
so that the ocean can swallow its messenger
And in a thousand years, let all of my glass pieces
wash up on the golden sands
of some forgotten shore,
smoothed and beautiful.

I am fragile:

Tissue-Paper skin,
Silken heartstrings.
Yet I still can breathe.
This tenuous breeze.

Glass bones,
in my glass home.
One stone,
is all it takes to breach,
My glass throne.

I am Fragile:
Please, shout at me,
while I can barely see,
what "me," really means.

Please, tell me I'm wrong,
So I can guess why,
I'm going to cry,
A broken song.

I am the fragile song who beats in amorphous tune,
to no one else's beat.
Who's piano strings are plucked by someone else's keys.
And who's instructions are in the other room.
Locked with someone else's key.

I am Fragile:
Easily broken or damaged.
Flimsy or Insubstantial.
Delicate and vulnerable.

I am the frail,
Who lives on the sheer strength of will.

I read books and had the practice
wedding in Sunday school, where Benjamin
got to break the glass with his foot
while I watched--I watched films, I knew
what I looked forward to. As sure
as I knew my baby teeth would fall
out. But unprepared for five years old,
when my first loose tooth fell in.
Not me and him but me
and Sandrita, little milagra, on the swings,
she knocked into me and the tooth was
swallowed whole and nothing to show for it.
I had the tooth fairy pegged from day one--
how would she have have known to look
for the empty promise under my pillow?
Now every time you stretch your neck
to glance up at the moon, hair behind
your ear, roll up one sleeve and then
the other, every time I fall again to five,
unblinking eyes, something shatters and I have
to run my tongue over the gap in my gums,
leave a note for my mother so she can see
her girl smile gap-toothed for the fairy
who will never come. You tilt your head
towards me and I must take the promise
of the broken glass beneath Benjamin's foot
and swallow it whole.