thisbluespirit: (dwj - irrelevant gnomic utterance)
thisbluespirit ([personal profile] thisbluespirit) wrote2012-01-10 09:12 pm
Entry tags:

Writer's Block: Poetry Break

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(I approve of this writer's block. Random poetry should be posted more often on LJ.)

First Ice

A girl freezes in a telephone booth.
In her draughty overcoat hides
A face all smeared
In tears and lipstick
She breathes on her thin palms.
Her fingers are icy. She wears earrings.

She'll have to go home alone, alone,
Along the icy street.

First ice. It is the first time.
The first ice of telephone phrases.

Frozen tears glitter on her cheeks -
The first ice of human hurt.


By Andrei Voznesensky

This is something that was in a small collection we used for GCSE (indeed, it had so many typos in it, I went looking for Auden on the basis of liking a poem actually written by somebody else, and they claimed this one was written by an 'Audrey' rather than an Andrei) so I know little about it; and maybe it is a translation - but the images in it lodged in my mind forever. Poetry is like that.

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