Mary Ruefle

Мэри Руфл
РУКА
Учитель задает вопрос.
Ты знаешь что ответить, полагаешь,
что в этом классе ты — единственный,
кто знает, поскольку предмет
вопроса — ты, а в этом
ты величайший авторитет,
но ты не поднимаешь руку.
Ты поднимаешь крышку парты
и достаешь яблоко.
Cмотришь в окно.
Не поднимаешь руку, ощущая
какую-то внутреннюю красоту своих пальцев
не барабанящих по парте, и лежащих
так расслабленно, спокойно.
Учитель повторяет вопрос.
На ветке, почти прикасающейся к окну,
малиновка чистит перышки
и весна — в воздухе.

The Hand
by Mary Ruefle
The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming, but lie
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.

photo: Michelle Eikenbary

Mary Ruefle

Mary Ruefle is the author of several volumes of poetry, most recently A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006), an art book of "erasures", a variation on found poetry; Tristimania (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2003), Among the Musk Ox People (2002); Apparition Hill (2001); Cold Pluto (2001); Post Meridian (2000); Cold Pluto (1996); The Adamant (1989), winner of the 1988 Iowa Poetry Prize; Life Without Speaking (1987); and Memling's Veil (1982).

About Ruefle's poems, the poet Tony Hoagland has said, "Her work combines the spiritual desperation of Dickinson with the rhetorical virtuosity of Wallace Stevens. The result (for those with ears to hear) is a poetry at once ornate and intense; linguistically marvelous, yes, but also as visceral as anything you are likely to encounter."

She is the recipient of both National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellowships as well as both an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and a Whiting Foundation Writer's Award. She lives in Vermont, where she is a professor at Vermont College's MFA program.