In Isika
Not always geographical, any place,
every place, perhaps I’m there right
now.
The road climbing higher and higher,
I must have sat here a long time, my
body covered by red mist.
In the distance St Sophia’s
Cathedral,
its gold and blue domes, like the
clematis flower called here
Pamiat Serdtsa, memory of the heart.
And perhaps it’s fitting I can’t
remember the names of the days,
not all of them anyway.
Her breath is cool on my face, the
hours running through.
She says, touch my mouth as I speak,
now say,
what is the colour of the light, the
stone
with copper running through, touching
her mouth,
in this language
what her name means, remembering.
…
Her hair, sometimes worn braided –
when I touch her, I am aware
at her waist
the weapons harness embroidered with
hawk feathers,
along the edge of the tunic, gold
webbing
hung with delicate altar charms, the
words
etched into them, Russian probably.
When I touch her, the least pressure
on her skin
leaves a faint salt stain.
Is that me or her?
When I touch her, I am aware of the
white leather
prayer book, and crudely stitched on
the cover
the image of the Immortals,
the one indicating we have
transcended time.
…
This wild, lovely woman
able to accomplish anything, one
of these Bohemians you read about in
novels—
the weird beliefs about the
derivation of all butterflies
and the Transcendentalist’s high
answer.
There are natives and there are
natives.
What have you been after, burying yourself
here
to be chastised with gold?
Indeed, you may admire the beaded
handicrafts,
but only upon reaching the inner
gates will you know
where you stand, the small birds
stiffening in the cold.
There are others, too,
many of whom were unknown to you,
their low condition.
You could almost hear your own heart
beating.
…
The cloudy oval dispelled illusions,
the green stone
actually a very small map of a
strange land.
The cleric declared that the ring was
of this space
but an earlier time.
On the railway platform, a wrenching
farewell,
then we were brought to the island,
to a shack made of boarding.
Grass appeared only for two months in
summer,
and in the winter we dug up to get
out,
setting plates of ice in window
holes.
At that place, the river was 60
kilometres wide,
with only crippled birches growing
there.
Out on the steppes, a synth wash of
house beats
and triggered samples, through
ceremonies of dust
horse archers sacrificing to
uncertain stars.
…
There are no helpful theories, no
therapies,
no solutions.
Here and there, some sets still
burned, one by one, television’s
painstaking replica of something that
never was.
In one stroke, the dark image
burning itself into talk shows
suddenly disappeared, together with
the samovar service given for running
bullion to Odessa,
and the ancient tombs found near
Voronezh,
later denied.
Burial mounds 2400 years old—
five young Scythian women, their
spears, quivers and bows,
energetic, converted, accompany,
remember,
whispering, transported.
…
A year of arriving, then cold dachas
another thousand days.
We go out one last time to the lake.
Taking off her clothes, she plunges
naked into icy water,
then in a glade nearby, finding
mushrooms never seen before,
their strange shapes, table, phallus,
smokestack.
I call to her to take care, to come
back.
Instead, kneeling among them,
she speaks to them these endearing
diminutives, saying
which she will gather, to be threaded
together to dry,
the poison ones left alone, remaining
beautiful.
I ask in my bad Russian what this one
is.
She says, for colours,
the way dreams walk straight into the
morning, and rarer,
the way morning bleeds into shapes
beside you.
…
After several minutes, I found myself
falling into true hallucination.
Oceans, barren lands, a bright blue
sky.
I disguised my presence
in speciation, in dietary isotope
evidence,
the changing paradigms
of hunter gatherer communities, in
chiefdom and prehistory feasts.
This next part I may have imagined:
the homeland security barrier
spanning the road, signs and barbed
wire,
the DNA detained in these
emplacements.
Here and there, one by one,
the painstaking replica of something
that never was, the dark image
through icy water.
…
On the overnight train.
I must have been here a long time, my
body
coloured by mist, in this space
of icons of ice and dust.
The red letters marking the station
sign are missing,
as though for a place that no longer
exists,
the words translated as the distance
travelled between worlds.
Her breath is cool on my face. She
says,
what have you been after, you
and these others unknown to you,
these hours at the inner gates, this
native tongue.
I touch her mouth as she speaks.
I can no longer pronounce my own
name.
…
On St John’s Eve, the girls weave
forget-me-not wreaths, exquisite with
periwinkles and rosemary,
casting them downstream for future
husbands to recover.
These lighted candle wishes
sail or sink, as goes love’s longing,
with bonfires set along the river’s
edge, young men
laughing, jumping through fire with
wreaths they fetched.
We play our violins and bass viols.
Our group always includes the finest
reapers.
A loaf of bread, baked from fresh
grain, is offered
the master of the house, who greets
us, dancing
with the girl we all agreed
swung best
the blade’s wide curves.
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