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From the book Kliazma and Yauza
From the book The Wild Rose
From the book Tristan and Isolde
From the book Old Songs
From the book Gates. Windows. Arches
From the book Stanzas in the Manner of Alexander Pope
From the book Stellae and Inscriptions
From the book The Iambic Verses
The Chinese Travelogue
From An Unfinished Book
From the book The Evening Song
From the book Elegies  
From the book The Beginning of a Book
From the book Elegies
(1987-2004)
The Beginning
In the olden days, when sowers and herders
inhabited the earth, and white flocks,
plentiful like the waters,
were scattered over the hills
and at evening hugged
the warm shores –
before the people, who had never yet beheld
anything like the face of Medusa,
abusive,
murderous,
after which,
like a stone to the bottom,
they go to the end –

before the people, above the vastness of space
freer than a wave on the sea
(for land is generally freer: permanence
breathes more deeply and evenly and doesn’t weight itself down)

so, in the vault of Heaven whose figures were still unknown,
unnamed, and therefore burned as they willed
before the people
down heavenʼs ladder
above the vastness of space
above the harkening hills which kept their eyes
on it,
on the first star,
out of the overflowing cup of the night
rising on a suspended ladder –
it suddenly appeared:
the light uttering like a voice
but infinitely more briefly
the same syllables:
Fear not, my child!
Thereʼs nothing to fear:
I am with thee.

F.D. Reeve
Autumn Water’s Elegy
The Sycamore Elegy
Earth
 The Beginning
Music
In Memory of a Poet
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