Anastasya Shepherd

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Tag: poetry

  • On the Nature of Poetry

    Trying to describe the indescribable
    is a mug’s game.

    There are no stories
    beyond the power of words,
    for stories are words.

    As we try to get at the magic of experience,
    the enchantment that can transcend facts
    and transmute reality,
    …it turns into a story
    born of words
    and limited by them.
    It rhymes and writhes,
    but artifice of language
    only hints
    at possibility
    of something deeper;
    it makes your reader work,
    inventing meaning,
    while losing your experience forever
    and making you redundant…
    What a pity!

    Poor poet –
    forever betrayed by your tools
    turning experience into stories,
    visceral into abstract,
    dreams into – what?

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Some thoughts on self-improvement

    Dedicated, with gratitude, to Yana Kane, who inspired this poem

    You set off on a difficult journey –
    the journey of self-improvement.
    You read books and attend lectures.
    You meditate and practice.
    You work on your self,
    but it stubbornly refuses to improve.
    It remains self-same,
    immutable safe-same,
    for if it changed –
    how would you feel yourself?
    With no you and no self –
    tricky!

    … but you do,
    of course you do,
    moment by moment,
    experience by experience,
    creation by creation,
    with or without a journey,
    you fashion your self
    out of current patterns
    and imagine that it was
    and that it will be.

    You cannot improve
    on something that never existed,
    but you can always change a story
    you just made up.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Night

    The chilly air tastes a little bitter,
    spiced by the silver light of crescent moon
    and blinking stars continually titter
    this endless night in June.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Solitude

    Without answer smiles become pathetic,
    they lose all meaning, fade into a grimace.
    The sound of a broken dripping faucet
    co-mingles with the rain and disappears.
    Like clammy shivers of persistent fever
    it permeates my body and takes over –
    my solitude.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • For Yana

    Have a sip of home brew.
    Tell me all about you:
    what you feel and what you think,
    would you like another drink?
    Give a cheer, shed a tear
    – we survived another year.
    Tell me of your loves and hates,
    what is past and what awaits.
    Dream in light of winter moon
    shining into this cocoon.
    We can hide from wind and storm
    here – cosy, snug and warm.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Time

    Time flows through me like water through a sponge.
    It oozes away, leaving a murky sediment
    of half-forgotten feelings
    and half-imagined events.
    And endless waiting.
    Sometimes it seems that I have been waiting ever since I was born.
    Waiting
    for something to happen
    and for everything to change.
    How?
    If I knew, the wait would be over.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Through The Trees

    I was so happy that evening,
    but it passed by and left nothing.
    In the mornings
    I cannot remember my dreams.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Night Light

    Tell me a kind fairy tale:
    I will listen with open-mouthed absorbtion;
    I will look at you with shining eyes;
    I will laugh and cry in all the right places –
    I will be the best listener in the world.
    Tell me a kind fairy tale, please!

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Morning

    The endless depth of the waking sky
    flattens when branches traverse it in black.
    You can switch from the boundless depth
    to delineated elegance
    and back.
    From beauty to beauty.
    The morning world is open
    and you can enter it.
    And you can go out
    and give presents to others
    and receive gifts
    and be happy.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in
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