Rachel Korn | Poems | DUSK AT THE SEA

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Dusk At The Sea

Sunsets are
like the last hemorrhage
of a consumptive,
that floods the sky’s
Western rim,
and embraces sorrow’s
decline,
at the scarlet-red ribbon.

The palm trees
with the oncoming night,
already darken.
They stand like
forsaken old people.
From time to time they
shake their weary heads
and raise their fringed twigs,
as if wanting
to rake away from themselves
the thick sad silence.
Under the burden of the moribund day
the pomegranate sea breathes heavily,
and splashes its white froth
upon the sandy edge-
the sandy shore,
the delicately weaving patterns
left by the legs of sea-gulls-
Spread in the length and width,
like a net,
to catch the first glittering star.

-Translated by Leonard Opalov
International Poetry Quarterly (10th anniversary) Volume X #4 Issue 40 Summer, 1972

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