CIRCLE AND RECTANGLE Poem by Maya Sarishvili

As a child I existed in just these two shapes:
Outside - the round yard of the children's playground,
Inside - the high-windowed loggia's rectangle.
Anything else was like a pitch-dark tunnel . . .
When I entered the loggia
A thousand drawers would open all at once:
Drawers with medicine, linen, jewellery, sealed papers,
And mischievous smells would waft out of them.
But in the morning, in the playground's roundness
A whirlpool of evergreen bushes foamed
And down the child's slide, with shrieks of joy,
Mingling with the children, angels rushed.

Translation: 2007, Donald Rayfield