My Sister Life and The Zhivago Poems

A Still More Stifling Dawn

✦ 66 ✦ A Still More Stifling Dawn All morning at your windowpane A pigeon cooed. In gutter drains The deadened branches drooped Like wet and heavy sleeves. A drizzle fell. A band of clouds Went past the dusty market square, Intoning at a hawker’s stall A lullaby to grief— My own, I fear. I begged them from the heart to cease. It almost seemed as if they might. The dawn was gray—like arguments in trees, Like prisoners’ whispers in the night. I begged them that the hour come, When there behind your windowpane The basin would erupt and rage, Like mountain ice, and pour The tatters of a broken song, The sleep-filled warmth of cheek, a brow, Against the glass as hot as ice Above your dresser. But the heights, for all that talk beneath the flag Of passing clouds, Heard nothing of my plea Amid the powdered hush, As sodden as an army coat, Like threshing’s echo in the dust, ✦ 67 ✦ Like heated arguments in trees. I begged them then: Torment me not! I cannot sleep. But still it drizzled, and the clouds Went past the dusty market square, Like troops . . . recruits . . . embarking in the dawn; They shuffled past for hours . . . years, Like captured Austrians, Like a muffled moan, A moan: “Some water, sister, . . . please.” ...