This is what my old Russian friend used to say (Esto decía mi viejo amigo ruso)

Another ode from my Dad’s book Boundaries (Confines).  This time to Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (Saint Petersburg, 1893-1984), the Russian and Soviet critic, writer, and pamphleteer.

This is what my old Russian friend used to say (Esto decía mi viejo amigo ruso)

“Winter has come down

on the new roofs, covered

with zinc, from the new Moscow,

that I see from my window.”

                                 Victor Sklovski.

Poetry is the context.  A place for dreams.

Territory of mist.  Land of spikes of corn.

Scent of bursting garden beds.  Solitude.  Scarce time.

Intimate and mysterious craft.  Plough that

creates countless paths of unexpected prodigy.

In my hands I discover magic powers.

And the world suddenly fits in one word.

Mi loyal Russian friend was coming back

from so many things seen and written

by his colleagues and himself.

And he used to repeat “I have lived a long time,

I have seen how the dimensions of the Universe change,

my heart has turned upside down.”

However the only persistent thing, the constant in him,

was still his little prophetic voice,

the poetry in his uneven calligraphy

identical to the bright minds of the remote years

of the hard and enthusiastic beginning.

Intimate and mysterious craft, simple and grave.

Contradictory form of evasion on a fast steed,

indocile some times, tame others,

always a way to get up, to raise oneself a few inches

from the metre of land that we will occupy at the end.