Paul Nemser: Two Poems

Paul Nemser

Paul Nemser’s poems have appeared in a number of magazines, among them Antioch Review, Barrow Street, Pequod, Poetry, and TriQuarterly. These poems are from a book-length sequence, Taurus and Europa in St. Petersburg, a retelling of the myth of Zeus and Europa in present-day Russia. Taurus is a bull-gargoyle in St. Petersburg, sometimes inhabited by the god. Europa is a human woman, among other things a model for cellphone advertisements. Another section of the sequence is forthcoming in Fulcrum this fall, and a section of about twenty pages is forthcoming in Arion this coming winter. Paul Nemser lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Europa’s crossing

When I try to cross a border,
the moon is full.

I listen for footsteps.
Do they come for me?

I listen for eagles.
Have I reached the sea?

Antelope rivers
bound away into the firs.

Is that you, my bull,
crashing through tall stalks, my guide?

The clouds go fast.
Full moon, moonspray, no moon.

My fate steps forelegs
down out of the sky. My exile

beckons with shaken horns.
My husband bears me on his back

toward crosshatch birches,
where gods and men

walk in the same shadows –
walk with the raven and the wolf –

over snow cracks
of a dark imperium.

Visitation: Europa’s dream

I hear a wave, angular and wet.
Only one wave.

It is a sea, though I sleep in mountains.
One come alive.

How did he come here, the one I awaited?
Changing rain.

Bull, my only, other-than-earthly –
Soul-heavy stone.

Sing, as to women you knew before me.
So many gone.

Ring for others who’ll follow my shadow.
Now but one.

I lie among loss, and ruin, and glaciers.
One torch, one cave.

This is my answer to layers of sorrow.
Ululate love.

The sea snows. The snow I scoop from waters –
This one place.

Melts on my palm. Oh! Love’s weather!
One mingled race.