Prelude

Прелюдия

Prelűd

                         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

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