Prince Myshkin

He, the fool hero, holds things holy,
Weights his words. When he walks into a room
People there grow silent as he slowly
Finds the center. All his smiles assume
An answer. If you think to catch his eye,
It's caught and he will move to you as if
You were the reason he was there. You lie
And bow and nod and speak, polite and stiff.
Those eyes are always caught and no one knows
Exactly what they see or why they seem
So innocent and open. Now he goes.
He leaves you as one leaves a fever dream.
Later when you try to call to mind
Precisely what was said and what replied
You can't. You know he knew just where to find
You in your silence and he knew you lied.

Prince Myshkin was the tragic hero of Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot.
Illustration by Ilya Sergeevich Glazunov, 1956

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The Raven’s Gift

Big black jackbird, strutting with your fellows,
Grinning in this grimy courtyard. You fill
These ragged spaces, Romanov yellows,
With your flirt and flutter. You spot the sill
With droppings and your drooping eye watches
A leaf fall, a door close, a drop of rain.
When the sky growls and the quick rain splotches
Dust with drops, more drops, you seek shelter. Sane
And sage, you know that what starts, stops. You stop
What you were doing when I leave the stoop.
You watch me walking. When I look you hop
And hunch and hide your eye. You leave your troop
Of proud oprichniki. You clap the stiff
Sleeves of your leather jacket. Moskvich, lift
My spirits. Leave a black feather as if
Night were my birthday and you were my gift.

Oprichniki were the black-clad, raven-like order of secret police that terrorized Muscovy in service to Ivan the Terrible in the late 16th century. Photo by Kasturi Roy.

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In the Brezhnev Blocks

Kuntsyevo Metro, Stalin's stop. It's six
O'clock. In the flat we remove our shoes.
Sergei turns the TV on and they fix
Dinner. We listen to a Russian choose
Words that Lorne Green spoke thirty years ago.
Lena brings selyanka and bread. Our hosts
Serve Pepsi, cognac, Fanta. Little Joe
Swings off his horse. The room is full of ghosts.
Salt cucumbers, yellow potatoes, beef,
Cabbage, onion. Our son's friends are the cooks.
We drink to him, to friendship, to brief
Beginnings, to poetry, to Russian books.

There are rugs on the walls. There is black bread,
Salt, vodka, music, a full Russian meal.
What will be drunk stays on the table. Dead
Soldiers sprawl on the floor. Why do we feel
That we have been here before? Why do we
Start to forget in Russian when we drink?
Why do we start to remember to be
The same people that we once were? I think
The guitar knows. You don't have to have read
Dostoevsky to recognize that in
This small Moscow flat right now no one's dead,
And no one's waiting for life to begin.

Sergei takes his wife's hand. They honor us,
Bow to us as Russians. So we must rise
And bow in turn. We are honored because
Russians may so treat their guests. Lena's eyes
Gleam green. She dances to Sergei's guitar,
Gypsy chords, rhythms. Then he sings of
Her green eyes and what they were and are.
In brusque Russian he tells us that they love
Us, kak mama, kak papa. We are parts
Abruptly, of their family, belong
To this Moscow evening, these Russian hearts.
And all of this in the space of a song.

How simple it was then, to think that we
Could return the next year and pick up where
We sat on our luggage for luck, to be
Safe on our journey and welcomed back there,
When we had already said our last good-byes.
That was the something we didn't know then.
Everything changes when you close your eyes.
We are always on that journey. It's when
You want the clock to stand still that space must
Keep its distance. Of course that's what you find
Out later. We possess in space but trust
In time and seldom see the two combined.

I remember this. How we danced and talked.
How Sergei's face crumpled into tears when
We left. How we fed the wild squirrels and walked
To the Moscow River and the boatmen
Shared our singing and our picnic. How eyes
Smiled at each other and at us. How
They gave us gift for gift. And the surprise
Of knowing that such gifts are given now.
The presence of a Russia we did not
Suspect. A distant relative, pleasant
But shy, a proud eccentric who has brought
Everyone an unexpected present.

Sergei and Lena in their apartment, 1994.
Brezhnev blocks (“brezhnevki” in Russian) refer to the thousands of identical concrete apartment blocks built in the suburbs of Moscow in the 1970s. While drab and brutal outside, they are quite warm and cozy inside.

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On the Canal, St. Petersburg

Sleeshkom doraga. It's too much, too dear,
This boatride through the granite canals where
The empty vodka bottles disappear.
They say each time you dip your fingers there,
It's new. You never touch it twice. And who
Can argue with that? I can only stand
On the landing, counting. I see the new
Neva and the new money in my hand.
The boatman speaks in Russian. He repeats:
Vosyemdyeset tisyech. And it's too dear.
Forty dollars to slide by the stone streets
Where Gogol wears his overcoat, to hear
The droshky drivers, the October rain,
Pasternak cursing. And I can't explain
To this shrugging Russian why his city's river
Is too dear, too deep, too distant to deliver.

Griboedov Canal, St Petersburg, 1994
Sleeshkom doraga – too expensive
Vosyemdyeset tisyech – 80,000 rubles, or about 40 US dollars

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Visiting the Dead

I call on Napoleon. The deep well holds
Remains of the First Empire, surrounded
By the splendid dead of the France they founded,
Marshalled under gold leaf and marble folds.
Outside it rains. Inside, the mystery
Of death becomes a page of history.

Karl der Grosse lies in Aachen. I feel
The fluted stone above his body, stand
Before the triptych that once felt his hand,
See the silver that magnified his meal,
And try to understand how granite can
Contain the greatness that contained a man.

Deep in Vienna's heart the Habsburgs sleep,
Cradled in caskets of castiron and stone.
They slumber best who do not sleep alone
And cannot care whose company they keep.
I sit and sip mélange until we meet
And marvel at the sunlight in the street.

Can we remember what must be buried?
I have seen Lenin lie like a wax doll
In a hushed chamber. Behind on the wall
Tablets mark the revolutionaried
Few whose bodies' proletarian presence
Reassures the workers and the peasants.

I'll have no such solemn end. I'll molder
Incognito, my bones becoming earth
Anonymous, anonymous as birth.
My body will decide to grow no older,
And people in their living rooms will see
No more than they have ever seen of me.

Lenin in his tomb

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