Gaunt in gloom,
The pale stars their torches,
Enshrouded, wave.
Ghostfires from heaven's far verges faint illume,
Arches on soaring arches,
Night's sindark nave.

Seraphim,
The lost hosts awaken
To service till
In moonless gloom each lapses muted, dim,
Raised when she has and shaken
Her thurible.

And long and loud,
To night's nave upsoaring,
A starknell tolls
As the bleak incense surges, cloud on cloud,
Voidward from the adoring
Waste of souls.

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]

DEDICATION

Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict. Immediately a flood of tears,
Followed by a total isolation,
As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or,
Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out,
But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends,
Captives of my two satanic years?
What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard?
What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon?
I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell.
[March 1940]

INTRODUCTION
[PRELUDE]

It happened like this when only the dead
Were smiling, glad of their release,
That Leningrad hung around its prisons
Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang
Short songs of farewell
To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along -
Stars of death stood over us
As innocent Russia squirmed
Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres
Of the black marias.

I

You were taken away at dawn. I followed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold
sweat
On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather

To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1)
Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935. Autumn. Moscow]

II

Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swanking about, with cap askew
It sees through the window a shadow of you
Gravely ill, all alone
The moon sees a woman lying at home
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead
Say a prayer for her instead.

III

It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't.
Not like this. Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed. . .
Night.

IV

Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling,
The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2)
If only you could have foreseen
What life would do with you -
That you would stand, parcel in hand,
Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth in
line,
Burning the new year's ice
With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar sways
With not a sound - how many innocent
Blameless lives are being taken away. . .
[1938]

V

For seventeen months I have been screaming,
Calling you home.
I've thrown myself at the feet of butchers
For you, my son and my horror.
Everything has become muddled forever -
I can no longer distinguish
Who is an animal, who a person, and how long
The wait can be for an execution.
There are now only dusty flowers,
The chinking of the thurible,
Tracks from somewhere into nowhere
And, staring me in the face
And threatening me with swift annihilation,
An enormous star.
[1939]

VI

Weeks fly lightly by. Even so,
I cannot understand what has arisen,
How, my son, into your prison
White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn,
Eyes that focus like a hawk,
And, upon your cross, the talk
Is again of death.
[1939. Spring]

VII
THE VERDICT

The word landed with a stony thud
Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind, I was prepared,
I will manage with the rest.

I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again. . .

But how. The hot summer rustles
Like a carnival outside my window;
I have long had this premonition
Of a bright day and a deserted house.
[22 June 1939. Summer. Fontannyi Dom (4)]

VIII
TO DEATH

You will come anyway - so why not now?
I wait for you; things have become too hard.
I have turned out the lights and opened the door
For you, so simple and so wonderful.
Assume whatever shape you wish. Burst in
Like a shell of noxious gas. Creep up on me
Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon.
Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation,
Or, with a simple tale prepared by you
(And known by all to the point of nausea), take me
Before the commander of the blue caps and let me
glimpse
The house administrator's terrified white face.
I don't care anymore. The river Yenisey
Swirls on. The Pole star blazes.
The blue sparks of those much-loved eyes
Close over and cover the final horror.
[19 August 1939. Fontannyi Dom]

IX

Madness with its wings
Has covered half my soul
It feeds me fiery wine
And lures me into the abyss.

That's when I understood
While listening to my alien delirium
That I must hand the victory
To it.

However much I nag
However much I beg
It will not let me take
One single thing away:

Not my son's frightening eyes -
A suffering set in stone,
Or prison visiting hours
Or days that end in storms

Nor the sweet coolness of a hand
The anxious shade of lime trees
Nor the light distant sound
Of final comforting words.
[14 May 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

X
CRUCIFIXION

Weep not for me, mother.
I am alive in my grave.

1.
A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour,
The heavens melted into flames.
To his father he said, 'Why hast thou forsaken me!'
But to his mother, 'Weep not for me. . .'
[1940. Fontannyi Dom]

2.
Magdalena smote herself and wept,
The favourite disciple turned to stone,
But there, where the mother stood silent,
Not one person dared to look.
[1943. Tashkent]

EPILOGUE

1.
I have learned how faces fall,
How terror can escape from lowered eyes,
How suffering can etch cruel pages
Of cuneiform-like marks upon the cheeks.
I know how dark or ash-blond strands of hair
Can suddenly turn white. I've learned to recognise
The fading smiles upon submissive lips,
The trembling fear inside a hollow laugh.
That's why I pray not for myself
But all of you who stood there with me
Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat
Under a towering, completely blind red wall.

2.
The hour has come to remember the dead.
I see you, I hear you, I feel you:
The one who resisted the long drag to the open window;
The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiar
soil beneath her feet;
The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied,

'I arrive here as if I've come home!'
I'd like to name you all by name, but the list
Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look.
So,
I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humble
words
I overheard you use. Everywhere, forever and always,
I will never forget one single thing. Even in new
grief.
Even if they clamp shut my tormented mouth
Through which one hundred million people scream;
That's how I wish them to remember me when I am dead
On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this festivity
But only on this condition - do not build it
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I fear
That I will forget the Black Marias,
Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old woman
Howled like a wounded beast.
Let the thawing ice flow like tears
From my immovable bronze eyelids
And let the prison dove coo in the distance
While ships sail quietly along the river.
[March 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

FOOTNOTES

1 An elite guard which rose up in rebellion
   against Peter the Great in 1698. Most were either
   executed or exiled.
2 The imperial summer residence outside St
   Petersburg where Ahmatova spent her early years.
3 A prison complex in central Leningrad near the
   Finland Station, called The Crosses because of the
   shape of two of the buildings.
4 The Leningrad house in which Ahmatova lived.


First published Sasha Soldatow Mayakovsky in Bondi
BlackWattle Press 1993 Sydney.

"Aug." 10, 1911.

Full moon to-night; and six and twenty years
Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres!
A year of infinite love unwearying ---
No circling seasons, but perennial spring!
A year of triumph trampling through defeat,
The first made holy and the last made sweet
By this same love; a year of wealth and woe,
Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow
In the pure light that filled our firmament
Of supreme silence and unbarred extent,
Wherein one sacrament was ours, one Lord,
One resurrection, one recurrent chord,
One incarnation, one descending dove,
All these being one, and that one being Love!

You sent your spirit into tunes; my soul
Yearned in a thousand melodies to enscroll
Its happiness: I left no flower unplucked
That might have graced your garland. I induct
Tragedy, comedy, farce, fable, song,
Each longing a little, each a little long,
But each aspiring only to express
Your excellence and my unworthiness ---
Nay! but my worthiness, since I was sense
And spirit too of that same excellence.

So thus we solved the earth's revolving riddle:
I could write verse, and you could play the fiddle,
While, as for love, the sun went through the signs,
And not a star but told him how love twines
A wreath for every decanate, degree,
Minute and second, linked eternally
In chains of flowers that never fading are,
Each one as sempiternal as a star.

Let me go back to your last birthday. Then
I was already your one man of men
Appointed to complete you, and fulfil
From everlasting the eternal will.
We lay within the flood of crimson light
In my own balcony that August night,
And conjuring the aright and the averse
Created yet another universe.

We worked together; dance and rite and spell
Arousing heaven and constraining hell.
We lived together; every hour of rest
Was honied from your tiger-lily breast.
We --- oh what lingering doubt or fear betrayed
My life to fate! --- we parted. Was I afraid?
I was afraid, afraid to live my love,
Afraid you played the serpent, I the dove,
Afraid of what I know not. I am glad
Of all the shame and wretchedness I had,
Since those six weeks have taught me not to doubt you,
And also that I cannot live without you.

Then I came back to you; black treasons rear
Their heads, blind hates, deaf agonies of fear,
Cruelty, cowardice, falsehood, broken pledges,
The temple soiled with senseless sacrileges,
Sickness and poverty, a thousand evils,
Concerted malice of a million devils; ---
You never swerved; your high-pooped galleon
Went marvellously, majestically on
Full-sailed, while every other braver bark
Drove on the rocks, or foundered in the dark.

Then Easter, and the days of all delight!
God's sun lit noontide and his moon midnight,
While above all, true centre of our world,
True source of light, our great love passion-pearled
Gave all its life and splendour to the sea
Above whose tides stood our stability.

Then sudden and fierce, no monitory moan,
Smote the mad mischief of the great cyclone.
How far below us all its fury rolled!
How vainly sulphur tries to tarnish gold!
We lived together: all its malice meant
Nothing but freedom of a continent!

It was the forest and the river that knew
The fact that one and one do not make two.
We worked, we walked, we slept, we were at ease,
We cried, we quarrelled; all the rocks and trees
For twenty miles could tell how lovers played,
And we could count a kiss for every glade.
Worry, starvation, illness and distress?
Each moment was a mine of happiness.

Then we grew tired of being country mice,
Came up to Paris, lived our sacrifice
There, giving holy berries to the moon,
July's thanksgiving for the joys of June.

And you are gone away --- and how shall I
Make August sing the raptures of July?
And you are gone away --- what evil star
Makes you so competent and popular?
How have I raised this harpy-hag of Hell's
Malice --- that you are wanted somewhere else?
I wish you were like me a man forbid,
Banned, outcast, nice society well rid
Of the pair of us --- then who would interfere
With us? --- my darling, you would now be here!

But no! we must fight on, win through, succeed,
Earn the grudged praise that never comes to meed,
Lash dogs to kennel, trample snakes, put bit
In the mule-mouths that have such need of it,
Until the world there's so much to forgive in
Becomes a little possible to live in.

God alone knows if battle or surrender
Be the true courage; either has its splendour.
But since we chose the first, God aid the right,
And **** me if I fail you in the fight!
God join again the ways that lie apart,
And bless the love of loyal heart to heart!
God keep us every hour in every thought,
And bring the vessel of our love to port!

These are my birthday wishes. Dawn's at hand,
And you're an exile in a lonely land.
But what were magic if it could not give
My thought enough vitality to live?
Do not then dream this night has been a loss!
All night I have hung, a god, upon the cross;
All night I have offered incense at the shrine;
All night you have been unutterably mine,
Miner in the memory of the first wild hour
When my rough grasp tore the unwilling flower
From your closed garden, mine in every mood,
In every tense, in every attitude,
In every possibility, still mine
While the sun's pomp and pageant, sign to sign,
Stately proceeded, mine not only so
In the glamour of memory and austral glow
Of ardour, but by image of my brow
Stronger than sense, you are even here and now
Miner, utterly mine, my sister and my wife,
Mother of my children, mistress of my life!

O wild swan winging through the morning mist!
The thousand thousand kisses that we kissed,
The infinite device our love devised
If by some chance its truth might be surprised,
Are these all past? Are these to come? Believe me,
There is no parting; they can never leave me.
I have built you up into my heart and brain
So fast that we can never part again.
Why should I sing you these fantastic psalms
When all the time I have you in my arms?
Why? 'tis the murmur of our love that swells
Earth's dithyrambs and ocean's oracles.

But this is dawn; my soul shall make its nest
Where your sighs swing from rapture into rest
Love's thurible, your tiger-lily breast.

I was 18 and surrendered to a Van Gogh sunset,
The Aegean Sea a calm mirror,
Plato’s sun, rose-red and dying,
A shift from wind to breeze,
Each night negotiates a calm.

There were eight of us
Inside the cave,
A cathedral inside a mountain,
Our home, high upside a cliff,
The mountain shepherds unhappy
With our stake,
Until we saved the lamb.

We’d found each other,
An octad to a family formed,
Wandering, drinking, annoying the Swiss,
Our freedom dangerous,
Beyond control,
Our odd desire to just be.

Hell, we were reading Hesse,
One of their own,
Our Swiss welcome spent,
They’d had enough,
And so we left for Athens,
To dance and sing,
And tender the sad patience of the Greeks.

Eighteen hours on the ferry to Eos,
People barfed huge arcs over the railing,
Then sat down to reread the headlines for the hundredth time,
Eos was an island of no cars, sparse electricity,
An abundance of religion
And a constant flow and cask of wine.
Retsina, the barrel sealing resin of the Aleppo pine,
An odd and unmistakable taste,
It left a hangover like a warning shot,
The only cure to drink again.

We spent Easter high on acid,
In the back pews of a church,
A thousand years of candles
White walls black with carbon,
A priest, a chalice, the smoking thurible,
A pendulum of incense and pure thought,
The ancients practiced faith with all their senses.

On cloudy moonless nights,
We walked the miles home,
Sandals slap on a sugar sand,
The beach ours, all of it
So dark we could only hear the sea,
The rhythm of the waves like the downbeat of the earth,
We plodded to its dark measure in a line,
On return, from village, church,
Or a lover’s walk through miles of wild daisies,
Until the rediscovered goat path up to our cave,
A Sisyphean task, a find each time,
Drunk, ******, alive, young, nuclear with hope and desire,
We would change the world,
We would mend kind all the broken parts.

And in our cave,
The sounds of others making love,
Rough grunts and soft sighs, whisper kisses,
I would think and dream,
And ride the silver of those waves
Our lives like skipping stones,
Brief, beautiful, and bound.

Sacred Ground

Space a dimension it is the ancient days converging and a priest with agelessness holds your stare

He looks beyond all artifice he scrutinizes thoughts where they come from where they are going
Your mind feels the fire it is all consuming it burns all impurities waste is hunted and pure blue fire

Annihilates this reprobate that was born when time began it has robbed all of true consequence
It finds only holy flame in this your most sacred place the priest moves with purpose into every corner

He carries the thurible filled with incense it permutes all nothing does it miss it represents ancestral
Wholeness you are indivisible with your mortal forbears this collection of prayers and thoughts  

Bespangles earths dark night arrest visions left by unseen visitors they open to you as the secretive
And as rare as the ghost orchid it only blooms at night it is impossible to find but here they grow

Profusely in this hideaway where temperate air breathes its mixed wisdom from the fount of
Creation here is where you further order make laws that are unbreakable and no one dares to trespass

The sanctity of the soul is impossible to breach by oath of death you have sworn to keep it pure
The place where you kneel for Holy rites like God’s holy mountain continually smoked from his presence

Here the foot hills are vestured by the spirit that gives you life beyond earths short span crowned in
Glory robed in righteousness not one speck that would mark you as unclean oh Holy fountain feed

Your waters into my sacred ground make them rise and then shower this place that spiritual fruit
Grow without end while I occupy this contrivance of flesh let them cascade down from the high rocks

A water fall to cleanse me from all evil not just it realness but its very appearance to thee I have bowed
And have forswear allegiance to you forever may my commitment be made stronger in these Holy

Waters enough to sway the souls of men and women who suffer pain and sorrow to follow thy word to
Their Sacred place where the gifts of heaven materialize as they commonly do in Heaven if such things

Can ever be called common here we have harnessed ancient ways brought it as quarried stone we have
Carried across centuries to build our castle that bears you Holy name and blazes throughout the

Darkened lost world so all can find relief under heady tides that seethe with untold blessing as well
As the natural sea.

This writing attests that God hears when we cry out for divine assistance to help others I parked by
Sacred ground that Sunday night it was where my grandmother lived and prayed and fasted sixteen

Days so this Town could have a church it started on her front porch now we must go to the harvest field
With new Zeal time is short do today what is needed tomorrow isn’t promised

Betwixt the crest
Of midnight and
Prime, the sopped
Tears of St. Lawrence
Fire like Cupid's arrows
Breaking deftly upon
The declivity of
Flamberge's wave
Sparking first things
First, purviewing a
A few things besides
Loves agony as Eos
Razes the unconcerned
Thurible of dawn like
A ghoulish sacring bell.


Eleete J Muir

Adorned once again
in somber black,
standing in a row
all inhale an aroma
of purifying incense
from burning charcoal
inside a Thurible
flowing in coherence
with the arm of the balding priest
who prances as a peacock,
circling three times past the altar table.

Buttocks bump against
weathered and worn
relic pews.
Muscles strain to tighten hamstrings
sending messages  
telling the body to please sit.

Tears flow without
the gush that erupted a year ago.
Now the gentle drain
is like shallow
hillside waterfalls in autumn.
Grievous pain is so familiar except
the lava of volcanic emotions
has cooled.
Tissues passed from hand to hand
as those who  anticipated
the display
take care of those
sure they would not cry
or who merely denied
the tempo of the day.

Incantations dwell near the icons
splashed gloriously on the wall.
Chants to forgive sins
of the deceased
combine with pleas
for divine intervention
to elevate the Valhalla home
upward a notch or two.
Blessed wine and sacred bread
distributed to all
who keep the faith
as did the beloved son,
husband, and brother.

I saw Jane
by the water tower
in Bugs Lane
I had come from home

after helping my father
saw logs in the shed
she looked pretty
in the sunlight

her dark hair
seemed aglow
and as I approached
she smiled

and it pinched me
inside in a way
I couldn't fathom
she had a book

in her hand
and swung it
back and forth
like a priest swung

the thurible at church
what have got there?
I asked
as I was by her side

it's a book
on British butterflies
she said
showing me

the book cover
which had various
butterfly pictures
on the front and back

thought we may go look
for some of them
she said
it's Daddy's

but he said
I could borrow it
ok
I said

that'll be good
-but being with her
was the real joy
just breathing in

her presence
her fresh apple smell
was the real goodness-
so we walked up

the pathway up
to the Downs
trees on either side
keeping out

the hot blaze
of the sun
for a while
except where it

broke through
overhead branches
and there were birds singing
and flights of birds

crossing over
and above us
are you all right?
she asked

-Lizbeth was unmentionable
between us now
we just never
spoke of her-

sure I'm fine
I said
collecting chalk fossils
you know

the ones inside
rock chalk
found two shells
inside one last week

that's good
you'll have to show me
she said
they're in my show tank

I said
along with animal bones
and skeletons of birds
in my room

have to ask
your mother
if I can see them
with you

she said
as we walked past
the big hollow tree
-yet when Lizbeth

came to my room
a while back
she never thought
to ask my mother

if she could go
to my room-
after a while
we broke out

into the open
and the sunshine
warmed us
and it was like

being born again
up there on the Downs
the grass
and the flowers

and shrubbery
and I liked being there
beside her
in fact it was

a love thing
just being there
let alone being there
looking out

for butterflies
she was
the butterfly beauty
in my eyes.

NON SERVIAM

Even at 7
found Catholic transubstantiation

hard to swallow.

Much preferred the Protestant
metaphor better.

The priest exposing the host
in the monstrance

the congregation bowing
in veneration.

"Corpus Domini nostri..."

Now...holy cow
Jesus is leaping

from the tip of my tongue
Christ...clinging

to my palate hanging
on for dear life

before going to pieces
slipping down my...gulp

. . .oe... soph...a...gus .

". . .In vitam eternam. Amen."

The incense from the thurible
as it sways

making me feel so
si...aghhhhh...ck!

Me a little Lucifer
a lightbringer ...my own morning star.

Afraid I am
going to throw

Him up

the second coming
as I sit in my pew and stew

transubstantiation is
the pits.

NON SERVIAM

Even at 7
found Catholic transubstantiation

hard to swallow.

Much preferred the Protestant
metaphor better.

The priest exposing the host
in the monstrance

the congregation bowing
in veneration.

"Corpus Domini nostri..."

Now...holy cow
Jesus is leaping

from the tip of my tongue
Christ...clinging

to my palate hanging
on for dear life

before going to pieces
slipping down my...gulp

. . .oe... soph...a...gus .

". . .In vitam eternam. Amen."

The incense from the thurible
as it sways

making me feel so
si...aghhhhh...ck!

Me a little Lucifer
a lightbringer ...my own morning star.

Afraid I am
going to throw

Him up

the second coming
as I sit in my pew and stew

transubstantiation is
the pits.

Our atmosphere was solemn
particularly since the Covid
induced censorship of that
which was a customary rite.

A solitary bee hovered over
what must have seemed an
elevated garden on castors,
gilt edged with brass baubles.

Benediction with an arrival
of Frankincense wafted by
high priests in a near pagan
ritual compelled its eviction.

NON SERVIAM

Even at 7
found Catholic transubstantiation

hard to swallow.

Much preferred the Protestant
metaphor better.

The priest exposing the host
in the monstrance

the congregation bowing
in veneration.

"Corpus Domini nostri..."

Now...holy cow
Jesus is leaping

from the tip of my tongue
Christ...clinging

to my palate hanging
on for dear life

before going to pieces
slipping down my...gulp

. . .oe... soph...a...gus .

". . .In vitam eternam. Amen."

The incense from the thurible
as it sways

making me feel so
si...aghhhhh...ck!

Me a little Lucifer
a lightbringer ...my own morning star.

Afraid I am
going to throw

Him up

the second coming
as I sit in my pew and stew

transubstantiation is
the pits.