Brenda Najimian Magarity: Language of Flowers

Flowers aqua and yellow
pressed between your Russian
and our English.

Flowers tidy and dry
colored portraits
pastel shades
a flattened bud pointing
to a word or phrase:
A reservoir left open.

I have forgotten why I put them
here
these book barnacles
living on the rhythm of a line
all these years
getting lost in translation.

Ah,
Akhmatova

I wish I could have softened
the down of your cold pillow
in Kiev.


Brenda Najimian Magarity © 1982
This poem was previously published in Encore, 1982