Exile
for Nadezhda Mandelstam
by Marlo Starr
Faces flash
at the window,
tires hiss
on wet cobblestone.
Here, even the rain
is listening. The poet
with his pocket Inferno
keeps quiet
at the border,
awaiting arrest.
Behind his closed eyes,
cities constellate
in floating dark,
elephantine sculptures
slump over ruins.
In another version,
a knapsack is emptied
on cathedral steps:
a book’s broken spine
makes its soft declaration.
For a last meal, his widow
pawns his library,
her back sloped beyond
a future tense.
A boiled egg for supper.
In her most secret act,
she marvels at its opacity.
She frees the shell
in one crackled coil
and holds the wet globe
in her hand.
Photo by Mathilde Karrèr
About the Photographer: We have been so excited for the chance to collaborate with internationally renowned photographer Mathilde Karrèr (@mathildekarrer). Mathilde is a French still life photographer whose photos capture textural narratives in a way both painterly and filmic. Her work has been published in Vogue, Mirror Mirror Magazine, and Sunday Times Style among others, with clients including NIKE, Montblanc, Olaf Hussein, and Ace & Tate.
Thoughts from the editors: ‘Exile’ is an act of listening. Pinned with telescoped sounds, the poem captures an expanding moment with concision. Marlo renders the Mandelstam memoirs (written in and about Stalin’s Russia) in flashes that shift from line to line, stanza to stanza. This a delicate narrative, held—as in the poem’s final act—like a sloppy wet egg in one hand, the alien in an uncertain place.