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Translated By Steven Seymour

He marked the page with a match

and fell asleep in mid-kiss,

while I, a queen bee

in a disturbed hive, stay up and buzz:

half a kingdom for a honey drop,

half a lifetime for a tender word!

His face, half turned.

Half past midnight. Half past one.

Source: Poetry (January 2010).

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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

This poem originally appeared in the January 2010 issue of Poetry magazine

• More Featherishly Purple
  by Michael Hofmann
• Prison Chaplain
  by Timothy Murphy
• A.F. Moritz Responds
  by A. F. Moritz

• January 2010 Table of Contents
• Subscribe to Poetry magazine
• About Poetry magazine
• Buy This Issue

More about this poem

Biography

Vera Pavlova was born in Moscow. She graduated from the Gnessin Academy, specializing in the history of music, and is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, four opera librettos, and lyrics to two cantatas. Her works have been translated into eighteen languages. The poems in this issue are from her first collection in English, If There Is Something to Desire, published this month by Alfred A. Knopf.

Continue reading this biography

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Poems by Vera Pavlova

• Am I lovely? Of course!
• I am in love, hence free to live
• Multiplying in a column M by F
• Only she who has breast-fed
• Those who are asleep in the earth

• More poems by Vera Pavlova (7 poems)
  • To converse with the greats
  • When the very last grief

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Living, Marriage & Companionship, Relationships, Love, Men & Women, Home Life, Break-ups & Vexed Love

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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Related

Audio

• Poetry Lectures: Vera Pavlova & Valzhyna Mort: International Poets in Conversation

Video

• First Collection in English of Best-Selling Russian Poet

Events

• Poetry off the Shelf: Music/Words: Inna Faliks, Valzhyna Mort, and Vera Pavlova

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