[“On foot”]

[“On foot . . . ]

“On foot

I had to walk through the solar systems,

before I found the first thread of my red dress”

Edith Södergran

cradles her huge cat Totti in the photos

on the borders of her country, the critics

hate her poems, she and her mother

in the Russian dacha in the Finnish town

where she speaks German writes in Swedish,

food supplies cut off, TB,

the townspeople think she’s mad.

Totti in sun, Totti on a chaise lounge

electric fur, paws curled,

the Russians shoot her cat, his

remarkable face-spots, blissed-out gaze

in her arms in all the photos except the first

studio portrait: a child in a plaid dress,

stuffed chaffinch on her arm, wings

spread to the left and right margins.