Friday poem: "For Akhmatova ('In A Dream')"

For Akhmatova (“In A Dream”)

All morning torrents
And announcements in thunder
Scrolling to rain’s stern fan
I doze to it at daybreak
Awaken to it later
Secure beyond firm fences
That curb these rash intentions

Now in a well of silence
The earth lies smothered
A few damp birds feign a soggy sonnet
Close by the senseless autos wend
And looking out upon these dregs of drama
I feel the spendthrift power of this moody lover
And the dumb harmony love’s alteration lends

You Akhmatova fragile in your shell of sorrow
With all your hopes of resolution squandered
Felt I’m sure the sprawl of spindrift currents
And thunder tolling like your heart’s own hammer
Even as the mountains seemed to founder
Until nature thrashing in chameleon armor
Donned a softer garment and lay spent

Then I wonder did you think like Faustus
Though unlike him in your chaste desire
To raise a cry to stay the hour
As if to save some starry sign some omen
Now vivid in the lucent aftermath of shower
Or dreaming did you see beyond the pain
One final poem rising vaporous from rain


7/3/96-5/26/98, 9/18-9/21/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission