after Mandelshtam
‘The dawn-trees float their dark coral
as though a sea had left them standing:
they testify to the visible
temerity of creation.’
‘Then who has been here before us?
Who wrote us in the mist? painted our
images into morning, as though
‘It isn’t always winter here:
the small fields are shaping themselves
through the thaw. I would count on so much’.
But the trees are a dark coral.
Voronezh, February 1937