This is a transreading of Vasko Popa’s ‘Bone to Bone’ from Modern Poetry in Translation No. 1 and ‘Swallows’ Language’ from Centres of Cataclysm, both translated by Anne Pennington. Drawn to Popa’s small sequences and crystalline language, I attempted to follow him, as I studied a stray fieldfare on my plot recently. Happily, I think the bird’s flown. He looked bewildered and forlorn.
My Fieldfare
He’s made of bone pins.
He’s a book inside a box
with a beak-shaped lid.
A snapped-shut lock.
He Makes Landfall
at Hagock where the Scollays
ploughed in patches,
wore tracks with their boots,
gulped spring water,
built their house.
Body
His muscles hurtle
from rump to neb.
First Song
The sky is my eye,
earth my egg.
From Noup to the Ness
in the turn of my head.
How I Know Him
His underwing flashes,
he wheels before settling
on plough or pasture.
His Manners
When the tide is asleep,
he swallows it.
His wings are granite
with a hundred eyes.
Second Song
Bone grinds skin,
stone splits grain.
His Passion
Flames again.
He thinks he is clay.
The sea wrought him
like a mace head,
speckled, banded,
half-way done.
Bird before he was bird.
Third Song
Snapped flint,
water-worn
sea pebble.
His Dress Code
He squints through an eye mask,
lifts his mottled back through west winds,
across north winds.
A Flagstone in the Wall Speaks to Him
Grapple with my grain.
My night surfaces.
Tap the lichen from my face.
Draw silver from my base.
Lament
I’ve lost my folk,
my night ships,
my dear blood,
thick then thin,
night bird, stray bird.
Tongue
A whip of liver-coloured flesh
sheathed in the coffin of his beak.
His Heart
Its flicker forms ice,
his own padlocked air.
His map of the wind
stiff with frost
in the skirts of an old storm.
He Takes His Leave
Fooled by the moon.
He’s lost his bearings,
like the night boat.
We need to talk
on the edge of sight.