Are you happy? You won’t say.
Just barely? That’s good.
If you’ve kissed so many
that you’ve sickened of love
none of them can have been the one.
I see in you all of Shakespeare’s heroines,
now Desdemona, now Lady Macbeth,
yours is the tragic grandeur of a woman
no one could save.
You’re tired of repeating a love recitative
that never soars into aria;
there’s a man’s wedding ring
on your pale hand,
unlovely and cold
as a wagon wheel’s cast-iron rim,
—and this says everything.
I love you, for the way you walk proud
under a storm-cloud of disapproval,
for the way that’s given your wit
corrosive bitterness,
because you’re so much better than them all.
I love you precisely because our lives
took such different directions.
How not? Neither knew where we were going.
But you lure me now like a brilliant inspiration
that can’t end well.
I love you, demon with the lofty thoughtful brow,
because I feel so guilty
that, even though I died trying,
nothing could have saved you!
I love you for the way you make me tremble,
I wonder, did I dream you? Are you even real?
I love the erotic irony,
that you are and aren’t what you seem,
that you can be so magically handsome
without being a he.
Seraphina Powell works as a freelance copy editor and proofreader, which is what one does with a humanities MA with a concentration in Russian. Her leisure is spent rummaging through second-hand bookstores and knitting sweaters for her much-blinking Sphynx cat, Casaubon—Powell is something of a George Eliot fan. In 2024 she became the LGBT and Eastern Europe editor for 96thofoctober.com. Her translation of the complete cycle of Girlfriend poems is available here.
