Orpheus by Nina Kossman
He sings his way up to being,
quietly, with unhurried breath,
as though words were a blossomed staircase
leading to a perfect sky
where the kind-eyed gods themselves
with slow, sinuous movements,
and ancient, immaculate hands
would greet him kindly: "Friend!"
As though the net to catch human souls
was masterfully spun of poetry,
of nothing but the sound of words,
not even the sense, the sound...
Where are the moonlit woods
that stood up darkly and strictly
in the soft, thick mist of his longing,
now that he has seen Eurydice vanish
back into the silent earth?
Bio
Nina Kossman is a Moscow-born poet, playwright, writer, painter, and translator
of Russian poetry. Her short stories and poems in English have been published in journals
in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Among her published works are three
books of poems in Russian and English, two volumes of translations of Marina Tsvetaeva’s
poems, two collections of short stories, and a novel. For Oxford University Press, she
edited the anthology Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths. Her writing
has been translated into Greek, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish, and she is the recipient
of a UNESCO/PEN Short Story Award, an NEA translation fellowship, and grants from Foundation
for Hellenic Culture, the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, and Fundación Valparaíso. She lives in New York.
Author's note
From Nina Kossman's introduction to Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths (Oxford University Press, 2001): "If we think we now know the answers, it is because the questions were first posed in antiquity. If we now see far, it is because we stand on the shoulders of tradition. Myths belong to us as much or as little as the imagery of our own unconscious: the deeper we dig into our psyches the more likely we are to stumble upon an ancient myth. Our ancestors are us or we are our ancestors: the texture of our bones is passed on, along with the texture of our dreams. And perhaps it is because the myths echo the structure of our unconscious that every new generation of poets finds them an inexhaustible source of inspiration and self-recognition."
"Orpheus" originally appeared in Nina Kossman's 2020 book Other Shepherds, as well as on her personal website.
