GOING TO COLONSAY

Finola Holiday

It is too late to go to Colonsay

where the frail light falls softly on the sea,

the ferry boat can take you – but for me

it might as well be half the world away.

I can still see the island in my mind –

the yellow iris shining on the shore,

the bracken clefs that curl from a fern floor,

the waves that spread their lace along the sand.

In June the darkness never quite comes down –

there in the north where the deer call at night

the Summer Isles lie in a long twilight

till the tide swings them back towards the dawn.

In here the nurses come to shake my bed

and bustle round the ward with supper trays,

they chatter of their summer holidays –

in France with Tom or Malaga with Ted.

But I – I long to see the gorse in bloom

Beside the sea loch, there on Colonsay

and hear again that single piper play

tunes to take with me to a downstairs room.

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MAKING JAM IN JULY

Ina Kabish

                      A woman who’s making jam in July

is resigned to living with her husband.

She won’t escape with her lover, secretly.

Otherwise, why boil up fruit with sugar?

And observe, how willing she does it,

as a labour of love,

even though space is at a premium

and there’s nowhere to store the jars.

A woman who’s making jam in July

is preparing to be around for a while.

She intends to soldier on, to hibernate

through the discomforts of winter.

Otherwise, for what reason, and notice,

not out of any feeling of duty,

should she be spending the short summer

skimming residue off jam?

A woman who’s making jam in July

in all the chaos of a steamy kitchen,

isn’t going to be absconding to the West

or buying a ticket to the States.

That woman will be scrambling out of snowdrifts,

buoyed up by the savour of the fruit.

Whoever’s making jam in Russia

Knows there isn’t any way out.

Translated from the Russian by Fay and Alex Marshall

© Published in the 2002 anthology ‘Russian Women Poets’.

Broadcast on Radio Four’s ‘Poetry Please’ programme,

February 22^nd 2009.