Poetry
Irina Frolova
The Way of Winter
Deep into the path I stop
at the sight of it
– a bed of snow.
Underneath, the pond is still.
My heart knows
this waiting:
the hard cold, the crystallised
longing, the fragile
ice of it.
Time a silver cloud
between us,
all-holding.
And the softness sweeps,
falls over me
all at once.
Зимний Путь
На тропинке я остановлюсь,
загляжусь на эту
снежную постель.
Тихо под покровом пруд лежит.
И знакомо сердцу,
как он ждет
сквозь метель и затвердевшую
тоску и сквозь хрупкий
этот лед.
Между нами время расстилается
всеобъятным
серебристым облаком.
И вокруг да около
нежность сыпется,
разметается.
Polunochnitsa*
she calls me
Polunochnitsa the spirit of
the night split
in half
in the dead of it I sit
with the trees
their malachite crowns rise
against the blind sky
opaque and viscous with
tomorrow’s rain
I whisper to them confess
how I really am
on the fence a possum
stops in her tracks
a frozen glare
I smile to her
break the ice linger
between the breaths
of days
* Polunochnitsa (pronounced ‘puh-loo-nOch’-nee-tsa’) is a Slavic demoness of the night.
Irina Frolova is a bilingual Australian writer of Russian background, philologist, psychology student and author of the poetry pocketbook Far and Wild (Flying Island Books, 2021). You can find Irina on Facebook @irinafrolovapoet.