England 1-1 USA

James Fenton (1949- )



Yellow Tulips

Looking into the vase, into the calyx, into the water drop,
Looking into the throat of the flower, at the pollen stain,
I can see the ambush love sprung once in the summery wood.
I can see the casualties where they lay, till they set forth again.

I can see the lips, parted first in surprise, parted in desire,
Smile now as a silence falls on the yellow-dappled ride
For each thinks the other can hear each receding thought
On each receding tide.

They have come out of the wood now. They are skirting the fields
Between the tall wheat and the hedge, on the unploughed strips,
And they believe anyone who saw them would know
Every secret of their limbs and of their lips,

As if, like creatures of legend, they had come down out of the mist
Back to their native city, and stood in the square,
And they were seen to be marked at the throat with a certain sign
Whose meaning all could share.

_____

These flowers came from a shop. Really they looked nothing much
Till they opened as if in surprise at the heat of this hotel
Then the surprise turned to a shout, and the girl said,
‘Shall I chuck them now
Or give them one more day? They’ve not lasted so well.’

‘Oh give them one more day. They’ve lasted well enough.
They’ve lasted as love lasts, which is longer than most maintain.
Look at the sign it has left here at the throat of the flower
And on your tablecloth – look at the pollen stain.’


Katia Kapovich (1960- )



In the Bathhouce

And when at last I used to leave the house
after the lazy Sunday rest,
the sun was high. It saw a town in drowse;
a golden rush of leaves lay to the west.
All northern Russian towns are quite alike:
a river, a long street along the river,
a square with a statue of a leader
stretching his right arm forward like a guide.
The crowd headed where his finger pointed:
to a bathhouse on the river’s bank.
I walked along with the others, a poor student,
a ghost of those blind alleys, nil, a blank.
In the light and shade of my sixteenth October
I carried but a parcel in my hand.
The smell of soap, of public bathhouse timber
is what I call the smell of the motherland.
And I remember skinny women’s shoulders,
curved spines and—with a gasp of awe—
their loose and bulky bellies in the folds
of many motherhoods.
The old stone floor
was warm and smooth under their bare feet,
sunlight fell on it through the upper windows,
rays intermixed with steam and water lit
the hair of the bathing women.
Their faces up, eyes closed, they stood
under the showers, like in an ancient chapel,
and listened to the choirs of migrant birds.
With their necks craned and with their nipples
relaxed under the water, with their palms
caressing chests and falling to their hips,
with bluish veins crisscrossing their slim ankles,
they looked like water nymphs.
Time, hold them still, save them like flies in amber!

I look out of the window across the cobble-stone plaza.
I see the autumn river which like a saw
cuts through the log of the horizon.
The eye finds only what was there before:
the sky, the water, many rivers ago.