Prelude
Прелюдия
in memoriam Sergei Rachmaninoff
Trains stand there stranded on the silent dark
Tracks stationary sooty-smelling blind
Trains
and in its moon-epauletted cloak
of clouds upswells the wind the Baltic wind
Like icicles from darkest hell so rises
The evening skyline of your obelisks
Oh city stabbed by future's sharp incisors
You split
like a swing-bridge in the midnight mist
Trains stand there stranded on the lonely silent
Tracks and the winter's epileptic froth
Invades the points' clenched teeth in a violent
Vomiting spate
oh North white Lady North
Wound of the Neva cleft of Eve
you yield
Inertly to the wind's hard breathing beat
Your frozen buttocks' curve is half-revealed
Trough Winter's blood-and-sperm-besplattered sheet
Translated by Peter Zollman
From 'Selected Poems' by István Baka