She recalled the fear that had overwhelmed her soul,
something had seized her throat so she couldn't cry
out to them, white birds, wild, light, drifting
in the sky which had turned the most remote black.
White birds in black sky, white scream in her throat,
hair splashing the shoulders chased by the awesome bird
hung in lulled air like an ancestor's soul, heavy,
languid, and waiting for an infusion of flesh—
another fill of forgetfulness, heaving,
not hiding her—like a mirror refusing a look
at herself from behind her startled shoulder;
the familiar landscape fleeing from her cry for help,
perhaps at the behest of a god, with his sad immortality,
knowing the images to be thus seized and begotten
from this shivering flesh—wild birds, flying,
no, words, healing...white and fleeting, up in the lightened sky.
She recalled that alone, she of all women, she,
the mother of the nation of mythmakers, the generation of
myth transforming itself into memory—man
of fire, taking her moistened lips; his voice,
chasing her, has become her children's; light,
gentler than her memory still not in her full command,
lighter, with gentler movements, more tact, less mythology,
the singing without the myth within; in the time
allotted for myth-making—her children singing
in the space allotted for healing music; sounds
that she remembered as the very same...
One last time they have seized her throat: wild, black birds, fly...
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."
"Leda" originally appeared as "The New Leda" in Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths, ed. Nina Kossman
(Oxford University Press, 2001).
