February 1986, on the twentieth anniversary of her death

You, who sang so many poets
and the death of cities and the young century,
your songs have kept us awake when
we should have died.

And may i now living, listen in your release
of the mute screams of a hundred mothers,
waiting before the prison wall,
their lips gone ‘blue with cold.’

What is it to endure just one winter,
the childhood willow choked in ice,
the Neva rolling on alone,
or night that teases you, but never comes?

What, to endure your own beauty?
The clap of tall black boots, not dancing naked
feet on the stairs? Your heart beating for a word?
Oh, but the long , dark cloud

–it passes. This day is reborn in your arms!
And sometime, I’ll wear your profile,
like a reticent god, where trembling
you translate a different star!

~ elaine maria upton
1986 (Boston, Massachusetts)-1999 (Hyde Park, New York)