poem on Mandelshtam’s birthday
Trust to the day and to your craft.
Send the old quayside caveat
‘Weather Permitting’ to hell…
Turn three times anti-clockwise
in your swivel chair, or on your heel,
only the daïmon or the muse
controls the tides. ‘Poetry’s a mystery,’
so wrote the poet’s widow
from the heart, knowing the worst,
having looked it in its steely eye.
This isn’t one of Stalin’s barges,
up to the eyeballs, stark-staring mad.
No matter the world is
staring at apocalypse.
Embark! Set sail…!
What though we may never meet again?