First night
It was your eyes that sobered me: arctic
like the ice at the end of the world, a fox
staring down his hare across the tundra
of the crowded bar; tight shirts and shots
of cheap whisky mixed with slanders and lusts.
I don't think I smiled. I was in the bar
and then I was in the bar with you. Did we
dance, or chat? When you handed me lager I spied
iceflakes glint on your dew claw. I was
bounding through tundra, a London suburb
draped in white water, pack-ice in the streets.
Did we meet in the road? You goaded me
here, your arctic eyes reflecting curtains
of ghost-light, a god's disco crackling static
before our next dance, before we kiss.
"I was washing outside in the yard..." : poem by Osip Mandelstam (1921)
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A poem by Osip Mandelstam, written in 1921. Russian original, recited (*ochin,
ochin* amateurishly) by me.
3 days ago
Hi Rik: Love S1, sets a great tone, very immediate. But the atmosphere gets confused – some of the language after that evokes a traditional stuffed bar, hot and smoky and sweaty and we lose something of the clarity of atmosphere. “I was in the bar//and then I was in the bar with you.” – lovely line and strophe break. “When you handed me lager I spied/iceflakes glint on your dew claw.” Fantastic line – lager, iceflakes and dew claw just belong together and hark back beautifully to S1. Apart from that, some confusion on sequence of events – meet in bar, bounding across London, then back kissing in bar? Get a bit lost as to who is where, when. Strong start, good luck with the revision. - Nic
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