Friday, April 22, 2011


Lena, Moscow, 1988


Girl in Box, Leningrad, 1981


Red Girl, Czernowitz, 1987
Boris Savelev

Barbara, c. 1920s


Barbara Sitting in Chair, c. 1930
Artur Nikodem

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Nothing Now Astonishes

A month of vigilance draws to its close
With silence of snow and the Northern lights
In longed-for wordlessness.

This rainbow spanning our two worlds
Becomes more than a bridge between them:
They fade into geography.

Variegated with the seven colours
We twist them into skeins for hide and seek
In a lovers' labyrinth.

Can I be astonished at male trembling
Of sea-horizons as you lean towards them?
Nothing now astonishes.

You change, from a running drop of pure gold
On a silver salver, to the white doe
In nut-groves harbouring.

Let me be changed now to an eight-petalled
Scarlet anemone that will never strain
For the circling butterfly.

Rest, my loud heart. Your too exultant flight
Had raised the wing-beat to a roar
Drowning seraphic whispers.

Robert Graves

Friday, April 1, 2011


Springfield, Massachusetts, 1973
Mitch Epstein