Зимородок - стр. 5

Let us arise and cross the threshold,

Let us run

To where the land and the water

Meet.

It is for us to name the vessel,

To unfurl the flag,

To set course

Across an uncharted sea.

It's a strange world,

made of echoing emptiness

pulling itself together…

Anastasya Shepherd

To blossom into being

A new world needs travelers.

Now we are here,

Calling out to each other:

“Look!”, “Did you hear that?”,

“This feels just like…”

“Watch out!”, “Where does this…”,

“Well done!” “What if?”

Now we are here,

Exploring with all our senses:

Humor, awe, dread, irony, appreciation, wonder.

When we gaze up

Celestial bodies

Flare into existence,

Dance with each other.

Flocks wing across the sky,

Swarms billow over bogs,

The air comes alive

With singing, buzzing, courting, hunting, pollinating.

Each step we take tells us

What is underneath our feet:

Grass, ice, rock,

A swaying bridge above the mist

That rises from the chasm

To cling to our ankles.

I do not know how far

We are destined to travel.

But I trust this world

To keep unfolding space and time

For our journey of exploration,

For as long as we are here.

…you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them.

Homer (translated by Samuel Butler)

Sirens have two kinds of songs

To lure those who come near them,

To bind the minds of travelers

With snares of longing.

Songs of adventure and of glory,

Of giving names

To new lands, to new creatures.

These songs promise freedom

From the tedium

Of familiar words,

From the confines

Of the cradle, the field, the hearth,

From the gray stones of the graveyard,

From the moss that steals over the names

Of a long line of ancestors.

Songs of warmth,

Of embracing arms and sheltering walls.

These songs promise to turn

The terrors, the regrets

Of past voyages,

The uncharted vastness of the future

Into words, into lusty tales

That can be traded

For a hearty tankard of ale

A seat close to the fireplace,

The eager gaze of a rapt listener.

I have nightmares now.

I dream that something happened to you…

Anastasya Shepherd

A nightmare is a kind of horse:

A powerful creature, wild and willful.

Approach her with respect, with skill,

For she may bite, kick or rear;

She may leave the one who dares to touch her

Broken, paralyzed, dead.

Yet she is capable of learning to accept a rider.

Balancing on the back of a nightmare,

Riding a dark dream,

We can leap much farther than is humanly possible.

A nightmare can carry us across an abyss.

The train stitches together images,

like a demented alliterating seamstress…