The Open Sky Over The Oka Poem by Fatmir Terziu

The open sky over the Oka
(A river ‘wave' for the Laureate of Literature Ivan Bunin 1870-1953)


The stars leave slowly,
Leave and are faced with the ‘polluted' air,
Leave, just as all leaves decompose,
On the wet days with autumn rain,
white sheets like the cornea of the eye,
are wrought on the variable lid under the retina,
it is the fermented song of life,
on which was spent the entire labour,
of the poet Laureate Ivan Bunin.

The stars leave and surprisingly rise,
‘Below the open sky'
Where the poet designed since youth.
Hence, at a vegetal rhythm
the breath of life alternates,
in order to give life to the verse,
and in the philosophical silence of the mind,
its skeletal roots sing,
and in the cold of the bronze,
lies the metaphysical theatre of weather.

The stars conduct in darkness
The song of the night in Paris,
In Moscow the refrain is numbed,
the sound of the horn in a wedge,
peacefully styled a frozen bronze,
over the Life of Arseniev,
with which Ivan made History,
when he led the Nobel to Russia.

Today the stars themselves are hospitable,
The words and verses, probably chosen by the poets,
The rust of the bronze on the froth of the river Oka,
The trees chosen every day seem to clean
the pleasant drawing of the light and water,
Collecting his thousand-page life's-work,
bent amongst the quiet waves of the river,
that reveal, intimately his hidden epic poem.