tops of birches

White Birch Grove, North (After Tarkovsky), Kirsten Everberg, 1998.

***

Tops of Birches

by Gennady Aygi, trans. by Alex Cigale

as though

nothing changed:

oh

stillness--after

whispering

gazing

and hearing--

(and i forgetting it was life long forgetting the past voiced as a cradle song so as to remember the rest of life the lullaby with its silent-originary spirit primal opening of me a widening it promisingly freely without limit)

oh

stillness--(long time already there is no one):

the air--among the tops:

of birches

(1983)

more about Gennady Aygi (Chuvash poet, writing in Russian to survive) here

also, lovely essay by one of his first English translators