lights of Harehills

‘time to give back to God his ticket’

Marina Tsvetaeva, ‘Poems to Czechoslovakia’, 1938, one of the last poems the great Russian poet wrote before hanging herself in 1941. Translated from the Russian by Ilya Kaminsky and others

‘Then one starts thinking. Why not drop it all? Why not finish it? Why not give the ticket back to God?’

When I wrote the bulk of this poem, in my early 20’s, thoughts of ‘giving the ticket back to God’ were strong. Several years later, arriving in Osho’s ashram (then called Bhagwan’s ashram) in Pune, India, I finally found sanctuary in his presence and his sannyas.

lights of Harehills
a pointilliste palette of a life left behind,
a premonition of a life ahead,
its mystery and pain

youth,
stranded on impossible dreams,
half homeward, half
fleeing

autumn,
season of standstill and decay,
bereft time,
cant time,
time to leave these shores

was Christ crucified here,
here in this quiet park?
or on the walls of the Uffizi gallery
or on the steel girders of Howrah Bridge?

all this
pen and bistre
wash
white body colour

did Rembrandt ever visit London?
there is some doubt on this point
he drew sketches of the cathedral and the river –
but did he ever go there?

‘this sketch is drawn after my wife,
when she was 21 years old, the third day
after our betrothal,
8th June 1633’,
the hesitant smile, her eyes half-closed,
the flowers in her hat,
veronica prostrata

inside the parlour,
in a chair full-length, fastened
by her grip, her unrequited essence,
the surreal gleam of skin,
her zeal

all this
pen and bistre
wash
white body colour

this feeble elegy to a feeble saint,
his lucid halo, slumped torso,
his delirium,
Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?*
the mirage of words and exhortations,
on the third day, the empty tomb,
the coming round,
‘equal to the angels’**

veronica prostrata
stigmata
unnailed
unpossessed
wordless

where rests the unborn man
the undying man

* Matthew 27:46
** Luke 20:36

Leeds, England 1970

No Shadow