#john high

[endless-unfolding]

Alone I stare into the frost’s white face.   It’s going nowhere, and I—from nowhere.

Osip Mandelstam, from “Alone I stare into the frost’s white face,” trans. John High in Poetry (April 2009)

[mollymcghee]

YET TO DIE. UNALONE STILL. Yet to die. Unalone still. For now your pauper-friend is with you. Together you delight in the grandeur of the plains, And the dark, the cold, the storms of snow. Live quiet and consoled In gaudy poverty, in powerful destitution. Blessed are those days and nights. The work of this sweet voice is without sin. Misery is he whom, like a shadow, A dog’s barking frightens, the wind cuts down. Poor is he who, half-alive himself Begs his shade for pittance.

YET TO DIE. UNALONE STILL. | BY OSIP MANDELSTAM |  TRANSLATED BY JOHN HIGH AND MATVEI YANKELEVICH 

[johnhighpoet]

milah libin described John High's poetry as reminiscent of the 1953 black-and-white Japanese film Ugestu Monogatari, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi and based on stories in Ueda Akinari's book of the same name.

[johnhighpoet]

Crossing the desert into

the place where she had

vanished we found her

horse & hat, a hidden

tree where all of the wind

gathered in a sense of

urgency & sound &

feeling--or was it just

another day--this life &

all of the listening ears

by the well as the boy &

camel stopped & took

their vows, the opening

signs of love drawing

water in a cup in these

pictured & timeless

letters home & diaries

once washed to sea to

meet them even here

when she returns in all

the grand moments of illusion.

(The photographer's field

notes near the end of

summer.)