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  • Writer's pictureCarrie Etter

Beyond the Sea by Elsa Cross (trans. Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Shearsman Books, 2016), second selectio


More fine passages from this splendid collection:

...the sound of the first cicada

now fitfully cutting

the silence of dawn.

Words wanted

beyond what they are--

*

Day returns us to a measured balance,

to limits--

until the cicadas

strike up:

a deranged scream,

a voracious incision

over the moment.

*

Suddenly still,

the tongue savours its slow monosyllable,

its restrained flames.

*

The waves are now only inebriation,

shouts that become quicklight.

from 'Cicadas'

Fibres of your voice

ignite,

hover.

from 'Invocation'

They crash against a cliff--

and their clear rhymes leap

onto the rocks.

from 'Oceanides: Daughters of the Sea'

A necklace for Kore.

The moon shines

on your sleepless breasts.

from 'Offerings'

They are an eye rising from the deep

a wish slipping from our hands

a stone against the mirror

they are the tip of the arrow

that will kill us

from 'Nictides: Daughters of the Night'

[Morning] glitters like the distant rowboats

under the merest care

of the sun

from 'Songs of the Aegean'

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