I bought a do-it-yourself kit, on sale. I didn’t know what it was a kit for, as all the writing on the package was in a foreign language I didn’t understand, but the price was right, so I bought it. When I returned home from the store I opened the package and, as I suspected, the instructions were in the same foreign language, but other than the instruction sheet there was nothing in the box. I could have gotten upset, but rather I was intrigued. Now, more than before, I had to know what the instructions said. I wasn’t about to throw two dollars out the window. So I went to the library with the instruction sheet. I assumed the language was Asian, as the script itself was unfamiliar, so I went straight to the Asian languages section and started perusing the books on the shelves. Before long I discovered that the language was Tamil. That was the easy part. The hard part was learning the language. I spent months teaching myself Tamil, and when I was confident I had mastered the rudiments of the language I once again looked at the instruction sheet. But the “instructions” gave no clue as to how to make anything. In fact, the sheet consisted of nothing more than several short passages, with such titles as “School Days,” and “Loyalty,” written in the simple style of a child’s primer, followed by one word at the bottom of the sheet, the Tamil equivalent of “Congratulations!” I finally understood what was going on when I looked again at the box the instructions had come in and translated the big red letters, the name of the kit: “TEACH YOURSELF TAMIL.” Not bad for two bucks.
Peter Cherches is the author of two volumes of short prose: Condensed Book and Between a Dream and a Cup of Coffee, as well as several limited-edition artist’s books. His work has recently appeared in the anthologies Poetry 180 and Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992. His fiction and short prose work has been featured in a wide range of magazines and journals, including Harper’s, Semiotext(e), Transatlantic Review, Fiction International, and Bomb. Sonorexia, the avant-vaudeville music-performance group he co-led with Elliott Sharp in the 1980s, appeared at such legendary venues as The Mudd Club and CBGB. Cherches is a two-time recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships in creative nonfiction.
Je ne veux pas de jours où Juin brûle et flamboie,
Pas de rayonnement de soleil, pas de joie,
Pas de bruit de chansons écloses ça et la,
Pas d’amour; je ne veux rien de ces choses-là.
Je ne veux pas, ô Dieu, de lumière ni d’ombre,
Du matin rose et fier ni du soir fauve et sombre,
De la femme ayant l’œil au vent et l’âme en feu,
De l’homme; je ne veux pas de vous-même, ô Dieu.
Car j’ai dans mes chansons, moi poète, des mondes,
Des mers où maint navire a sombré sous les ondes,
Des forêts pleins de chants et des champs pleins de blé,
Des amants égarés sur le sentier sablé;
Des couchers de soleil, des batailles, des femmes,
Des roses, des enfants, des arbres et des âmes;
Mon œil vaut plus qu’un astre; et j’ai dans mes vingt ans
Toutes les fleurs avec tous les pleurs du printemps.
*
I want no bright June days, no summer light,
No radiance or glory, no delight,
No psalms and serenades; I need none.
No love, God. No shimmering, no shadows,
No rosy-fingered dawn, no forest nights;
I need no woman, icy-eyed, on fire,
Nor any man. I’ve no use, God, for you.
I am a poet. Worlds rise with my songs;
I dream oceans, sink ships beneath the waves;
Birds carol in my woodlands; fields grow gold.
I sing lost lovers wandering the shore,
Sunset, women, willows, children, roses, war,
And souls; my astral eye illumines all.
I grasp within my span of twenty years
The whole of spring: the flowers and the tears.
Associated with the Pre-Raphaelite circle in England, Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was a prolific poet and translator — most notably of Villon — who wrote several unpublished poems in French. His “Caprice” is in French alexandrines in the style of Victor Hugo, whom he idolized. The Swinburne scholar Cecil Lang discovered the manuscript of “Caprice” in the Library of Congress and published it in his New Writings by Swinburne (1964). The manuscript paper is watermarked 1863, but the poem, if the text is to be taken literally, would have been composed a few years earlier.
A specialist in the Victorian period, Elisabeth Gitter is Professor Emerita of English at John Jay College, CUNY. Her translations of French and Italian poetry have been published in TLS and Victorian Poetry.
Yuan Zhengzhen was a palace lady of the Southern Song Dynasty (c. 1200), a time when 99% of Chinese women were illiterate. The above poem has not been previously translated into English, to the best of our knowledge.
Xue Tao (768–831), along with Yu Xuanji (bio below) and Li Ye, was one of the three best-known female Chinese poets from the Tang Dynasty. Xue was the daughter of a minor government official in Changan, the Chinese capital during the Tang. A hundred of her poems are known to have survived to this day.
Yu Xuanji (approximate dates 844–869) was also from Changan. She is distinctive in that many of her poems are written in a remarkably frank and direct autobiographical style — that is, using her own voice rather than speaking through a persona.
Song Zijiang, Chris, a native of Guangdong Province, is currently completing a Masters degree in Literature at the University of Macau. Song has worked on many translation projects, including from classical Chinese into English, and of Australian and American poets into Chinese. His latest book of poems, Strolling, was published by the Association of Stories in Macao in 2010.
Kit Kelen is an Australian poet/artist whose literary works have been widely published and broadcast since the mid seventies. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Macau in south China, where he has taught Literature and Creative Writing for the last ten years. The most recent of Kit Kelen’s books of poetry is China Years: Selected and New Poems (ASM, 2010).
Dominique James (webpage) is an experienced commercial and fine art photographer currently based in New York City. For more than 25 years, he has worked on a variety of film and digital imaging projects, and has presented more than 50 one-man and group photography exhibits. While he is best known for his celebrity portraits, and is proficient as well in fashion, product, food, travel, landscape, architectural, interior, and adventure photography, an ongoing series of personal works explores the many aspects and dimensions of both black-and-white and color fine art photography.
Ah, bu rüya gibi vadi, bu bahçe, bu havuz!
Bu ezgi kulakta, bu şarap damakta,
toy düğün gecesinden kalan!
Bu tan yeri cömertliğinde körpe sine,
Bu alev gibi yakan dudaklar,
ah, bu tatlı baş dönmesi!
Avuçlarımın arasında tuttuğum bu biçimli baş,
Bu benzersiz güzel gözler,
bu güzel, bu derin, bu zeki…
Bunların hepsi, ey Kader, bunların hepsi,
Kıyılarımızı döven bu dağ gibi varlık dalgaları,
bir damla ölümün yanında ne ki?
Anlımıza vurduğun o kuzgunî tuğra yanında,
Gözümüze sokmak için değilse onu,
bu çarşaf çarşaf beyazın hükmü ne, Nakkaş?
Kopan telden çıkan o detone tınlamanın,
O tek vuruşluk hoyrat sesin yanında
bunca neşidenin hükmü ne, Çengî?
O bir yudumcuk zehir zıkkım şarabın yanında
Üzüm şerbetiyle dolu bu billur sürahinin,
bu koca kâinatın hükmü ne, Meyhaneci?
Sorası tutuyor işte, aptal mı aptal aklın!
O sorunca da, kafası karışıyor, keyfi kaçıyor,
ödlek mi ödlek nefsin, bedbin mi bedbin yüreğin!
*
Morning of Hayyam
Ah, this dream-like valley, this garden, this pool!
This tune in the ear, this wine in the palate,
Left over from a cold wedding night!
This tender chest as generous as daybreak
These blaze-like burning lips,
Ah, this sweet dizziness!
This beautiful head that I hold in my palms
These unique, pleasant eyes,
This pretty, this profound, this intelligent…
All of these, O! Fate, all of these,
These mountain-like waves of existence that stroke our coasts
What is it worth beside one sip of death?
Beside that raven royal stamp that you dashed to our foreheads,
If it’s not for thrusting under our eyes,
What’s the legitimacy of this sheet by sheet white, O! Embroiderer?
Beside that off-tune tinkling that emanates out of a broken string,
Beside that single pulse of the clumsy sound
What’s the authority of these nasheeds, O! Dancer?
Beside that one sip of poisonous wine
What is the worth of a crystal jug, full of grape sharbat
What’s the rule of this universe, Pub-keeper?
So silly mind falls into an enquiry.
When it enquires, it thickens; its joy runs away,
Of that so coward self, of that so pessimist heart!
20 August 2002
Notes: “Royal stamp” refers to the Tughra, the calligraphic seal or signature of an Ottoman sultan. Nasheeds, or anansheeds, are Islamic songs popular throughout the Muslim world, usually unaccompanied.
Cahit Koytak was born in Erzurum on January 29, 1949. He graduated from Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Chemistry in 1974 as a chemical engineer and worked as an engineer before starting his own business. From 1994-2008, he worked at a private TV channel and he still works as a freelancer. Koytak has translated numerous books from Arabic, English and French into Turkish. His poems have been published in many Turkish literary journals, including in Dirilis, Kelime, Yönelis, Yedi Iklim, Kayitlar, Gergedan, Defter, Kasgar, Hece, Yansima, Le Poete Travaille, Kitaplik, Kirklar, Merdiven Siir, and Anlayis. He won the Turkey Writers Union “Translator of the Year” Prize in 1988 for his translation of Peau noire, masques blancs by Franz Fanon.
Mustafa Burak Sezer was born in Istanbul in 1981, and has been writing poetry, short-stories, essays, and short film scenarios since 1996. His works are widely published in Turkish literary magazines since 2004, including in Dergâh, 7edi Iklim, Istanbul Bir Nokta, Mor Taka, Ikindi Yagmuru and Ç.N. Sezer graduated from International Islamic University Islamabad, Faculty of Languages & Literature, in 2009, and is working as a journalist, a correspondent of TimeTurk in Pakistan. He has translated many poems, essays and short-stories from English and world literature into Turkish and from Turkish into English. His first poetry book, Free Things, will be published soon.
The cleaning woman, an Albanian who had been living in the village for almost eighteen years, one of the first to cross the border and, in search for work, come all the way down to Peloponnese, mostly on foot and occasionally hitch-hiking, noticed it first when she went to clean up and prepare the chapel for the annual liturgy on St. George’s name day, April 23rd.
The priest, terribly shocked at the news, ran immediately to the cafenion where the village men were enjoying their first coffee in the open. (Spring was really here now and even a Greek winter can cause depressions.)
No, not St George’s bell. It has been ringing ever since 1907, more than a hundred years, and it was the village students’ present to the newly built chapel, financed mainly by their collection of donations. It was from a time when students wore uniforms and caps, and needed almost half a day to arrive here by horse carriage from Athens, nowadays just one and a half hour drive away.
During the German occupation, St George’s bell rang to warn the partisans whenever the German soldiers mobilized towards the hills where the partisans were hiding and from where the chapel watched over the village. The men now in the cafenion, mostly in their sixties or younger, where the sons and grandsons of those men sent running scared up the hills when the bell spoke to them.
A spontaneous meeting was held in the cafenion. A few phone calls and a few more of the village elders joined the angry round. It didn’t take long and, as always happens on these occasions, the foreigners were blamed. But the Albanians who for years and years used to be the usual suspects were not illegals anymore, didn’t sleep under the orange trees in improvised tents, didn’t have to steal everything not nailed down and sell it in order to survive till the next job appeared. No, the Albanians now had labor permits and lived in houses, their kids went to school here and were actually the reason, a few years ago, why the village elementary school was not closed down. Too few were the children being born, the birth rate of the village too low. Blame it on the stress of modern times; everyone knows that we are real men otherwise, all the men in the cafenion agreed.
Spirits were already somehow calmed down. The new illegals, the young Africans who usually hung around in the main district town, were soon also disqualified as bell thieves. The village’s teenagers explained that these were too well controlled by their own Mafia, which was not interested in bells but in whores and pirated CDs and DVDs. They knew this of course, because they were grateful customers themselves.
There was just one possibility left: the old usual suspects, the Gypsies (no one called them Romani here, not even they themselves).
Yes, the Gypsies controlled the scrap metal market and since the prices of copper and iron skyrocketed, the Gypsies had ransacked, bought, took, or dismantled anything they could. Two neighbors went to court last month, accusing each other of stealing the iron posts that had marked the shared border of their properties, before discovering that the posts had been stolen, like everybody else’s in the area.
The metal prices shot up after the real estate crisis in the US for reasons that no one in this cafenion could really explain; it’s just the way capitalism functions.
The villagers agreed that St George’s bell which had been ringing for this village ever since 1907 likely landed in capitalism’s melting pot, together with the iron posts marking land ownership. And not only the communists in the cafenion laughed at this joke.
It was agreed that a new bell would be ordered at the best bell foundry in the prefecture. Who knows, something from the old bell might find its way into the new one. It’s a small world after all.
Maria Koliopoulou was born in Greece and now lives in translation in Northern Germany. She has worked as a freelance screenwriter and teaches Modern Greek and English. She writes poetry and short stories.
Нет ничего прекрасней и привольней,
Чем навсегда с возлюбленной расстаться
И выйти из вокзала одному.
По-новому тогда перед тобою
Дворцы венецианские предстанут.
Помедли на ступенях, а потом
Сядь в гондолу. К Риальто подплывая,
Вдохни свободно запах рыбы, масла
Прогорклого и овощей лежалых
И вспомни без раскаянья, что поезд
Уж Мэстре, вероятно, миновал.
Потом зайди в лавчонку banco lotto,
Поставь на семь, четырнадцать и сорок,
Пройдись по Мерчерии, пообедай
С бутылкою «Вальполичелла». В девять
Переоденься, и явись на Пьяцце,
И под финал волшебной увертюры
«Тангейзера» — подумай: «Уж теперь
Она проехала Понтеббу». Как привольно!
На сердце и свежо и горьковато.
*
There is nothing else as fine and free
as to break up for good with a beloved her
and leave the railroad station all alone.
And then in front of you entirely new
the palaces of Venice would reappear.
You linger on the stairs and then go to
take a gondola. As you approach Rialto
you breathe in freely smells of fish,
rancid butter and the stale vegetables
and recall without regret that her train
has probably already passed Mestre.
Then walk into a banco lotto shop
and bet on seven, fourteen and forty,
walk down to Merceria and dine
with a bottle of Valpolicella. At nine
you change and show up at the Piazza
and, listening to the magic overture
from the Tannhäuser, think: “By now
she must have passed Pontebba.” How easy!
Your heart is refreshed, and slightly bitter.
Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich – Ходасевич Владислав Фелицианович (1886-1939) was an influential Russian poet and literary critic who presided over the Berlin circle of Russian emigre litterateurs. During his first years in Berlin, Khodasevich wrote his two last and most metaphysical collections of verse, Heavy Lyre (1923) and European Night (1927). Khodasevich didn’t align himself with any of the aesthetic movements of the day, claiming Pushkin to be his only model. For more, see his Wikipedia entry.
Andrey Gritsman, native of Moscow, Russia, lives in New York City—a physician, poet and essayist who writes in two languages. He is the author of several books in Russian and English, and his works are widely published and anthologized both in the US and in Europe. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times, and runs a popular Poetry Reading series in New York.
Quand j’ai quitté le foyer pour te
chercher, le soleil me blessait
les yeux, donc pendant plusieurs
jours je les couvrais des mains.
La chimiothérapie a pris
mes cheveux, et
les draps dans lesquels je me suis
enveloppé s’enfoncent
dans les grues et fouillis
des usines le long du bord
de l’eau. Une rangée
de gratte-ciel et leurs lumières
forment la toile quand enfin je
regarde à l’intérieur de ce qui reste
du fleuve, nos reflets
adoucis par les nuages qui dérivent
dans le ciel. Ici, tout est
dépouillé pratiquement jusqu’aux lignes
et ombres, et je
discerne ton image comme si
elle était peinte sur mon front,
les restes précieux
et ossifiés. Si je dessinais sur l’eau
avec du temps je pourrais
raccorder ces segments infimes
et droits, les joindre et les facetter
jusqu’à ce qu’ils paraissent
en courbe, jusqu’à ce que je me rappelle
nos rapports, le rythme
pizzicato de tes aiguilles
à tricoter. Plus loin en aval
où l’eau est lavande
pure, je me dis, Continue à pousser ton
fauteuil roulant. A travers
un réseau claustrophobe
de plans abstraits, la terre
desséchée, crevasse, quelquefois
au bord de s’échapper de la pesanteur et transcender
l’affaiblissement du
monde matériel, je franchis autour des
têtes de poissons qui pourrissent aux bouts
de leurs arêtes sèches jusqu’à ce que, en laissant des traces
de mes cellules qui restent en couches de badigeons
légers afin que les palmes dans le fond
puissent être vues nettement
au travers des pétales de tulipes en avant,
j’entre ta cacophonie dessinée
assez librement de fleurs
et de légumes voluptueux où
la lumière dorée et les tons
de terre chauds atténuent la beauté
non naturelle de nos deux
morts apparemment contraires.
*
To My Grandmother and Her Garden of Hope
When I left home to search
for you, the sun hurt
my eyes, so for several
days I covered them with my hands.
The chemotherapy has
taken my hair, and
the sheets I wrapped myself in stick
in cranes and factory
clutter along the water’s
edge. A row
of skyscrapers and their lights
form the backdrop when I finally
look into what’s left
of the river, our reflections
softened by drifting overhead
clouds. Here, everything is
stripped practically to lines
and shadows, and I
discern your image as if
it were painted on my forehead,
the precious ossified
remains. If I drew in water
with time I might
connect minute straight
segments, join and facet
them until they appear
curved, until I remember
our relationship, the pizzicato
rhythm of your knitting
needles. Further downriver
where the water is pure
lavender, I tell myself, Keep pushing your
wheelchair. Across
a claustrophobic network
of abstract planes, the earth
parched, cracked, at times
poised on the edge
of escaping gravity and transcending
the dullness of the
material world, I negotiate around
fish heads rotting at the ends
of their dried spines until, leaving traces
of my remaining cells in layers of thin
wash so palm leaves in the background
may be seen clearly
through tulip petals up front,
I enter your loosely defined
cacophony of voluptuous
flowers and vegetables where
the golden light and warm
earth tones mitigate the unnatural
beauty of our two seemingly
opposite deaths.
* * *
Aussi bleu que du sang non oxygéné
Le matin arrive clair et mesuré
Comme si la méchanceté
N’était jamais née
Cela seul prend cinq semaines
Le dessin régulier de taches dans ton sommeil
Rendu dans les contours blancs
Tranquille à l’exception d’une certaine part de honte
Si bruyante que tu te demandes où
L’océan est
Une demi-douzaine de tortues te regardent avec curiosité
Avant de s’en aller en bondissant au galop ralenti
Comme une cadence sur une portée
Claire de musique, cette goutte d’eau
Aurait dû avoir déjà improvisé un orage
Le ciel comme cuivre
La terre percussion
Une déesse unijambiste gagne
Son sourire sculpté
Tu commences à voir ce qui est relié à quoi
Comme un ingénieur subdivise les arches sous un pont
Et la sécheresse de la terre
Au-dessous pourrait être déterminée
En longueurs d’ondes visibles et infrarouges
Intérieurs caverneux de temples
Où des flots de lumière tombent
En angles faux
Tu as le sentiment que
Ce qui précède ces chutes ne sera pas
Toujours syncopé avec des dobermans
Qui anticipent le rythme
La nuit arrive une armure gris clair
Comme si tu n’avais jamais été chantée
T’adapter à la dilatation de tes poumons
Prend plus de temps que le remplissage
De ces milliers de petits trous
*
Blue as Unoxygenated Blood
Morning comes clear and measured
As though wickedness
Had never been born
This alone takes five weeks
The regular pattern of spots in your sleep
Rendered with white outlines
Quiet save for a certain element of shame
So loud you wonder where
The ocean is
A half-dozen turtles stare at you curiously
Before loping off in slow-motion gallops
Like a cadenza on a clear
Staff of music, that water-drop
Ought to have improvised a storm by now
The sky like brass
The earth percussion
A one-legged goddess earns
Her sculpted smile
You start to see what’s connected to what
The way an engineer subdivides arcs under a bridge
And the ground’s dryness
Underneath could be determined
In visible and infrared wavelengths
Cavernous temple interiors
Where streams of light fall
At wrong angles
You get a feeling
What precedes these descents will not
Always be syncopated with dobermans
Anticipating the beat
Night comes a light gray weave
As though you had never been sung
Adjusting to expanding your lungs
Takes longer than filling in
Those thousands of tiny holes
Download the podcast
Author’s note: I would like to thank the Concord Presbyterian Church and Ed Pfeiffer for helping me record my poems. Their willingness to assist in this project was invaluable.
Laura Merleau’s poetry has recently been featured in Sweet, The Los Angeles Review, and Ragazine. An excerpt from her play Bipolar Order appeared in the September 2010 issue of Muse.
This very moment a fisherman, someone unfamiliar, trails his fishline, a silver gesture, under the ledge, the cliff.
He pulls up empty, he poles his antique skiff still searching the cove in all dark water. Sheer-silk distances speck the gulls on waves. Umber reeds spell omens in this weak sun.
Yet he sings in our twilight, his notes boom across water, his spirit moves into folds, the silent gold flashes that mark each peaking wave…
Aura of the moon, rising first—and out of such deep black!
* * *
Neighbor
The old Taoist, in traveling clothes,
head wrapped, shoulders a heavy gourd (looks like a two-headed man when
the sun’s behind him). He wears
palm-fiber sandals for rough paths and goat-wool socks. He’s a healer,
mending qin and tendering herbs for curing ills, outing bad spirits.
Under clouds and the red-leaf canopy, he threads home over rocks. Mountain neighbors say
he’s built his hut on an overlook at the base of Three Gorges. —Who can follow him that far? Where to find him when we have need?
*
Note: A qin [prn. cheen, and often spelled “ch’in”] is an ancient, plucked string instrument capable of several octaves and great subtlety of expression. It is highly prized. Those who categorize it in the zither family (played on table or lap) disregard calling it a lute (usually held vertically).
Zheng Xie (1693–1765) was a bureaucrat, painter, poet, and calligrapher from Kiangsu, in Eastern China. Writing poetry was a required skill for Chinese officials, as intense and pertinent as knowledge of Confucian tenets. While a magistrate’s positions could be ephemeral, subject to the whims of superiors, Zheng’s poetry was second in lasting effects only to his widely admired and respected skills as a calligrapher and painter, through which his poems often were published. His poems are still loved by Chinese, carved as they are into stone in public places. As a man of the arts, the outlook reflected in his poetry seems more Taoist and joyful than the sober Confucianism of a civil servant might otherwise allow, but both perspectives clearly helped shape his poems of witness and delicacy.
Roberta Burnett’s poems have appeared in Soylesi Poetry Quarterly (tr. into Turkish), The November 3rd Club, Lucid Rhythms, Pirene’s Fountain, The Bellevue Literary Review, and Naugatuck River Review. (She guest-edited one volume of NRR.) Her recent book of poems is Trying Not to Look (Flarestack Publishing, UK). She was a solo reader for Tempe, Arizona’s “Poetry in April” series (2006). Her M.F.A. in poetry (2000) is from Vermont College of Fine Arts, with post-graduate work at Arizona State University; B.A. and M.A. (English), Cal State University, Long Beach (CSULB). She taught writing, research, semantics, and literature at colleges and universities for 18 years.
Small Santa Clara pot I buy
in the Santa Fe market from its maker,
Noel, maybe a grandson of Maria: he breathes
spirit into its mouth and hands it to me:
it fits in my palm, its mouth ringed
by the rainbow serpent, fragment
of my ancestry—so too in my palm the dour
Scots taking the land from Irish owners,
the French trapping mink in St. Croix,
the Cherokee on the long trail of tears
to Oklahoma grasshopper heat, the English
brothers hopping a freighter, scrabbling
west to pan for gold in California,
pick cotton, cobble shoes for luckier miners,
and the grandfather who sold golden
Mazola oil and cornstarch by Model T
and wrote poems to the grandmother
who praised violets, blue and true, in hers,
and the grandmother raised on the reserve
who stitched draperies till her eyes went bad
and the grandfather who repaired
leaking pipes, telephone lines,
and typewriters—here I am in Santa Fe
holding a black bowl fired and glazed
by Noel in a secret way that gives a shine
to its black on black shell and holds
the breath of generations in its mouth.
Robin Chapman is author of six books of poetry, including most recently Smoke and Strong Whiskey (WordTech Editions) and Abundance, winner of the Cider Press Review Editors’ Book Award. Her seventh, The Eelgrass Meadow, will be published by Tebot Bach in 2011. She is the recipient of the 2010 Helen Howe Poetry Prize from Appalachia.
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Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich – Ходасевич Владислав Фелицианович (1886-1939) was an influential Russian poet and literary critic who presided over the Berlin circle of Russian emigre litterateurs. During his first years in Berlin, Khodasevich wrote his two last and most metaphysical collections of verse, Heavy Lyre (1923) and European Night (1927). Khodasevich didn’t align himself with any of the aesthetic movements of the day, claiming Pushkin to be his only model. For more, see his 
