Not life or death,
Creation or its fall,
Not good or evil,
But the whole, the all —
This fruit of knowledge
Is still dim, still green.
The ripening of dawn
Remains unseen.
The soul does not yet trust
The sense of sight,
Still hides in terror
From the kindling light.
It’s here, though each glimpse of it is brief,
It’s here, the lambent glow of joy and grief.
Am I reflections of the world or the mirrors reflecting it?
Anastasya Shepherd
One story of this world
Begins with “Let there be light”.
I do not think that punctuation
Had been invented
When these words were first recorded.
But judging from what follows,
An exclamation mark
Should cap that sentence.
But what about Indra’s net?
What are the words
That first emitted and still carry
The light that knits it into one great whole?
What punctuation should we use?
A question mark seems most fitting.
You and I, like everybody else,
Are both:
Jewels linked into a net
And reflections bouncing within a hall of mirrors.
But let us not get trapped.
We have the power to play it
Like a game, a dance,
A laugh-inducing tickle.
Я список кораблей прочёл до середины
Осип Мадельштам
…The list Of soaring ships I’ve read up to the middle.
Osip Mandelstam (translated by Alex Sitnitsky)
Wake up! Wake up!
There is a porthole, a port, a portal,
A momentary gap
Right here,
Where the past
Meets with the future.
A dawn breeze is rising.
You can glimpse the swaying masts,
The white sails being hoisted.
You can hear the seagulls laughing,
The lines groaning, singing,
Taut with force
Ready to propel the ship.
Let us arise and cross the threshold,
Let us run
To where the land and the water
Meet.
It is for us to name the vessel,
To unfurl the flag,
To set course
Across an uncharted sea.
It's a strange world,
made of echoing emptiness
pulling itself together…
Anastasya Shepherd
To blossom into being
A new world needs travelers.
Now we are here,
Calling out to each other:
“Look!”, “Did you hear that?”,
“This feels just like…”
“Watch out!”, “Where does this…”,
“Well done!” “What if?”
Now we are here,
Exploring with all our senses:
Humor, awe, dread, irony, appreciation, wonder.
When we gaze up
Celestial bodies
Flare into existence,
Dance with each other.
Flocks wing across the sky,
Swarms billow over bogs,
The air comes alive