Poetry Is Like A Cat

Poetry is like a cat,
said the Russian poet Irina Ratushinskaya
on television the other day:
comes when it pleases,
stays, if you are gentle with it,
leaves you at once if you’re rough.

I know, I know its cat-ness,
suddenly coming along with the lightest of steps,
looking you in the eye for no reason at all,
unblinking, burning bright –

as abrupt as spring’s arrival in a cold land:
the forsythia’s sudden naked fire before your door,
the violet sheen of birthing in the lilac’s joints,
the grass a shade greener.

But the Russian poet, Irina Ratushinskaya,
who’d been in prison for the crime of writing verse,
said she would write her best poems
in heaven’s assembly, standing before God –
should she receive the call.

God – marked with the male sign:
father, uncle, master, patron.

I have little hope of receiving such a call.
Nor do I know the etiquette of that court.
A rustic curiosity I have: has he a porch?
And does a bougainvillea trail over it?
The art of poetry in a trillion tongues of the world
he really will understand?
I bow to you, Lord!  Bon jour! Buenos días!

In my earthly home I sit, my washing hung out.
Are only poets called to heaven, not those who wash?
Don’t they need the art of laundering there as well,
the skill of removing
stains of blood and sweat, wine spills from party clothes?
Have they no need of the love of a washerwoman’s heart?

Cold tea.  Weed-undermined,
the patio tiles lose their grip, and wobble.
The parasite ivy
sucks the blood of the tolerant hawthorn.

Come, wild cat, allow yourself to be caught.
Drink milk from my cracked saucer.
Lick your whiskers.  Yawn.  Sleep in the sun.
There’s no harm, is there, if I get
from you and no one else
a few poems that taste of the earth, the grass
and sour leaves.


Note: ‘the love of a washerwoman’s heart’: the fifteenth-century Bengali poet Chandidas, a brahmin by caste, is said to have been in love with Rami, a washerwoman.

Written in Kidlington, near Oxford, in the early nineties, and part of Jadukar Prem, Jadukar Mrityu (1999). Translated by the author. This translation was published in Modern Poetry in Translation, New Series, No. 17, published by King’s College London, University of London, 2001.