to the poet Osip Mandelstam
'We live, not feeling the ground under our feet,
no one hears us more than a dozen steps away...'
-Osip Mandelstam
and to Lydia Chukovskaya
the white owl whittled the silence down:
who will comfort whom? who.
will anyone? who.
bright feathers descend
bright feathers descend
but there are no angels.
I thought, for a moment,
a foot on the snow: then I looked back:
the crunch of the silver pathways.
I only listened.
I did not know.
who. who whittled the white owl
covered in mists far whiter than he
and we're so far in the mists
who will ever hear our speaking
mary angela douglas 8 december 2014
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem