POETRY
Poetry was always around in Asiya's life. Initially, as the source of educational materials for her daily Russian language class within her homeschool program; eventually, as the source of inspiration and fuel for curiosity; and, finally, the outlet for emotions, ideas, thoughts and creativity.
Asiya started writing poetry at the age of six, and continued throughout her life. At a certain point, she started working on the English translations of her Russian poems from her multimedia projects. In 2013, she started writing original poems in English. Below you can find selected poems, originally written in English language, as well as links to her poems that were translated from Russian.
SELECTED ENGLISH POEMS
* * *
Nothing changes in Mansfield, Macondo of Pennsylvania
Same sunsets, foggy nights, hills, same cricket mania
Through seven years, same mint soap sold at a corner shop
Same menu at the ‘Night and Day’, same jokes to crop.
Nothing changes in Mansfield, dear locals forget to age
And I always find myself with them on the same page
What is their secret? The song of the morning bird?
Or is there much more profound and magical undergird?
Nothing changes in Mansfield’s endless mountains and trees
Its fields, cows, and homes, its symphonic bees.
They are all washed by the sound of evening bells
And the stories from distant times, which that music tells.
Letters to the sunrise
* * *
You only know that you’re alive
When feeling sun through closed eyes
When hearing music of the life
And sound of the rhymes
* * *
I wish I had words to use the same way I want food that does not exist
I wish I had time to co-play multiple songs that have to twist
I wish I had air to breathe, exhale and blow to fly up far away
I wish I had powers to make everything around just my way
* * *
My everything is you, no matter when and how
Emerges blissfullness of magic flight
That took me places that I've never been before
The places in my soul and mind
That give me wings and hope in
Euphoria of life
* * *
Behind the magic of the stained glass
There is a world of prisms, full of color
I wish I lived there on a top of a tower
Unreachable for darkness to surpass
* * *
The volatile art of sounds
That fills the air and minds with waves
It heals my heart the way it pounds
And gives my soul the joy it craves
* * *
Tomorrow they will say I'm mad
For doing something you can't whisper
I rather be a sonorous whistler
Pied Piper of them all who rat
I bear glory of a short motif
That comes to me in music often
Through centuries it means to soften
What otherwise you can't outlive
* * *
Without words, there is no sound
Without sound, there's no words
The music circles all around
The world with souls and the swords
The swords protect and pierce, and bury
The music and the world of souls,
And bring them to that peak of glory
Which each of us forever calls
* * *
Happiness has no color but it shines
Piercing air with its lines
You know it as you know your art
By heart
Sadness has no color but it glows
So does the time as it flows
Best regards for you while you wait
Up straight
* * *
There is the love in all of us in all of us
That balms and grinds, that builds and tingles us
It leaves no air, it leaves no marrow, just the ashes behind
It leaves the fire flowers - glory of the mind
It shapes our breath and wrinkles our will, it kills us all
With firm and deadly promise of approaching wall
That love in all of us in all of us
Alas
* * *
It’s crying day of thawing snow
Which is belittling the winter
Deep in the clouds, it may mean to
Reveal the storm that waits to grow
I want the moment of sunrise
Which makes my eyes appear yellow
I want to be another fellow
That never fears, that never cries
* * *
The trees are pink, the sky is purple,
The thoughts and memories do hurtle
The air, transparent in its maze,
Bewilders every eye to gaze
In every moment of despair
Majestic world invites to glare
Into itself, in every root
As into upside down salute
We wake and pass, we mourn and pray
We hope for evergreen hurray
We procreate in mind and flesh
Procrastinate and start afresh
We fade in facing evening’s force
It paints the sky in fiery coarse
It comes with warmth and leaves with cold
And lets the universe unfold
* * *
Eternity is time as vertical as growing stem
Which wants to be in love the same as ever
With air and stars in it and life - and all of them
Are circling in my tired hands, I know, where
Together they are singing their forgiving word
Impossible to comprehend without
Attentive ear as tempered as battle sword
And heart of power that could tame a crowd
* * *
One day I find myself in space, in a Walkyrian dream
I fly again, I ride again through the volcanic steam
I let my power interrupt direction of the times
So I can play with them, as wind plays with the chimes
* * *
For those who love and those who pray
And those who cannot stay away
Who wake and fall without air
And bless with just another glare
Who do not want to change at all
Who wait and wait for morning call
Who fake, create, procrastinate
And those who push and elevate
For you this song forever sings
It gives you trembling pair of wings
It lends you choice to fly or stay
To live or die, to love or pray.
Wordplay
On the longest day of the year
My heartbeats smear
They moan legato
They shake vibrato
They reach fermata
On the longest day of the year
That longest day of the year is bright
Turning itself into a plight
Yes, light means life, but
Only until burning a cut
Through your very gut
In the longest of all the years’ fight
At the longest sunrise of our lives
We forgive ourselves for all crimes
We moan like wolves
We shake our goals
We reach our souls
In the longest dream of all times
© Asiya Korepanova