In Memory of a Poet | Olga Sedakova's Official Web Site


POETRY

PROSE

ESSAYS

INTERVIEW

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)

In Memory of a Poet

Staring into the sky,
into empty features,
into the straight as a brace
azure of blindness,
the way a gaze absorbs
into its soaring smoke
goods and chattel, a spurned bequest, tinwear,
everything that is before him,
the way the lap of a lagoon,
the sound, smell and view,
sepulchral strings
of the sisters Pierides
absorb, penetrating
into the singer’s silence
at the edge
of exile, beyond the edge of the end.

In Memory of a Poet