Doris Kareva

And I love you because
I love you.

Why meet —
you are but air for me.
...

For all
who have gone astray at sea,
for all
who have spilled the day,
...

When I write
I shepherd unheeding words
on the nigh impossible slope
of the pass of silence.
...

I sing in praise of the loser
for the winner is well lauded,
I kneel before the forlorn
I bow before the beaten.
...

Chant the mantra, mandragora,
mandragora, deathly deep sleep-weed:
it all keeps turning, keeps churning,
keeps occurring.
...

Of all pains
that seize us,
sooner or later
we choose one
...

That which is can be expressed
in another language,
that we forget at birth.
...

A seaside house
always feels like it is a ship,
just landed.
...

Blazing, unmoving sun
over the isle of death,
the white stone house of Time.
...

The scalpel and the metronome
on my father's piano
kept a silence between them,
when I was a child.
...

Bitter and scarce is the northern light.
The sledge here is drawn by heavy shadows,
the owls and wolves keep watch.
A word crunches between the teeth.
...

I dreamed about the world.
That wild one,
it attempted to surround me, and to match
the shores of my imagination.
...

She was the fruit of the strange mysterious marriage of a
ballerina and a philosopher; of a fleeting loving embrace of
beauty and truth, a transient chime of polarities amidst
fainting worlds.
...

Desert dogs run through my dreams,
light, fast, and silent,
just like the wind of God;
beautiful and regal, night after night
...

Desert dogs run through my dreams,
light, fast, and silent,
just like the wind of God;
beautiful and regal, night after night
...