Rainy Day Poetry

by Edith Sodergran, 1892-1923. Translated from the Swedish by Stina Katchadourian.

Love

My soul was a light blue dress the color of the sky;
I left it on a rock by the sea
and naked I came to you, looking like a woman.
And like a woman I sat at your table
and drank a toast in wine, inhaling the scent of some roses.
You found me beautiful, like something you saw in a dream,
I forgot everything, I forgot my childhood and my homeland,
I only knew that your caresses held me captive.
And smiling you held up a mirror and asked me to look.
I saw that my shoulders were made of dust and crumbled away,
I saw that my beauty was sick and wished only to--disappear.
Oh, hold me tight in your arms so close that I need nothing.

I saw a tree...

I saw a tree that was taller than all the rest
and laden with pine cones out of reach;
I saw a great church with open doors
and all who came out were pale and strong
and ready to die;
I saw a woman, smiling and painted,
throw dice for her fortune,
and I saw that she lost.

A circle was drawn around these things,
which no one can cross.

Poetry for a Rainy Morning

I've been loving Wallace Stevens lately. This one's not calendrically appropriate, but it is meterologically fitting, I think:

Metamorphosis

Yillow, yillow, yillow,
Old worm, my pretty quirk,
How the wind spells out
Sep - tem - ber....

Summer is in bones.
Cock-robin's at Caracas.
Make o, make o, make o,
Oto - otu - bre.

And the rude leaves fall.
The rain falls. The sky
Falls and lies with the worms.
The street lamps

Are those that have been hanged,
Dangling in an illogical
To and to and fro
Fro Niz - nil - imbo.