Summer days with growing joy

  Bloggens kronometer för Pulitzer-historia pekar på 1938. Det året gick priset till den Kiev-födda Marya Zaturenska för boken "Cold morning sky". När man tar in den upphöjda tonen i samlingen är det svårt att föreställa sig att Andra världskriget var nära förestående.

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  Marya Zaturenska, som var gift med poeten Horace Gregory, skrev åtta volymer med poesi och redigerade sex antologier. Hennes många utmärkelser inkluderade Shelley och John Reed Prizes från Poetry Magazine, där hennes arbete publicerades första gången.

  Hon föddes 1902 i Kiev, och kom till Förenta staterna vid 8 års ålder. Liksom många andra immigranter arbetade hon i fabrikerna på dagen och deltog i gymnasiestudier på kvällen. År 1922 fick hon ett stipendium till Valparaiso University i Indiana och ett år senare överfördes hon till University of Wisconsin. Hon tog examen från Wisconsin Library School 1925. I hennes utgivning ingår bland annat "Threshold and Heart"; "Cold Morning Sky'', för vilken hon fick Pulitzerpriset 1938, och hennes sista volym, publicerad 1974, "The Hidden Waterfall". Marya Zaturenska Gregory dog 1982. Källa: The New York Times

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Midsummer twilight (ca 1890)
Willard Metcalf

Midsummer noon, by Marya Zaturenska
(From Cold morning sky. New York : Macmillan, 1937.)

Calm, ripe, and gold the shadows fell
on trees whose green was feather-light
in the sweet air against a sky
tranced in the rich midsummer spell
of beauty, warm compacted, bright,
glowing in clear intensity.

And in my wrist, and at my brain
the jeweled tick of time and sun
subsided and grew still again.
I saw the sparkling shadows run
through glimmering avenues of trees
to exquisite oblivion
and the high pitch of noon was done.

And in my head, my ears, my heart
and in the subtle wrist-pulse clear
I felt a clamorous faintness start,
in intimate and desperate fear
Death's elegant, worn face drew near.

The dwindling shadow of that high
perfection that had grown complete,
had drained my joy's deep fountains dry
and left things salt that once were sweet.

The world through shadow softly glowing
restored itself to its own size,
restored its lowered love and heat
into the sun-dilated eyes
and natural quiet softly blowing
descended on the ripening wheat.

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  Mer än hälften av samlingens texter har en anstrykning av sakralt tema. Följande dikt om den sällsynta glädjen utgör en form av budkavel mellan vardagen och lycksaligheten.

Rare joy, by Marya Zaturenska
(From Cold morning sky. New York : Macmillan, 1937.)

Not plucked like stars, flowers from the sky
are you, rare joy whose artless glance
makes light and sweet the lover's cry,
teaches the withered heart to dance,
lights the glazed eyeballs of the blind
and pours its healing on the mind.

Rare as the tropic birds of light
in northern islands dull with frost
are you restorer of true sight
and that first early freshness lost
through troubled years; that goodness caught
in innocence, now always sought.

Crown with white violets the hour
when the clock's pulse grows faint with care,
when beauty weeps within her bower
and sees the fatal, first, gray hair
among her golden tresses show
and feels time's dimming afterglow.

Dear as an infant's face, as loved
as youngest child, by its fond mother
outstretch your happy hand ungloved
soft flesh to awakened flesh, no other
ca stir the arid roots of time
in a perpetual summer clime.

O none like you dear joy can move
the eyes to sun, the limbs to speed
in the quick harmony of love
when anger makes the silence bleed.
Teach, teach, your scholar how to send
the message that seals friend to friend.