ON READING EUGENE ONEGIN
A little Eugene Onegin
A little rain. . .
A pistol getting wet at a duel,
The bullet of despair fired into the trees.
Long and meandering ridgeways,
“Let’s go,” says the Fountain of Bakhchisaray.
Through the foggy valleys have hied
The springs of unbridled times.
By the shadowy shores of rivers
Have hied the flowered crosses.
Sparks spatter from the candlesticks
Harbinger of bad fate to tell fortunes in wax.
“Do you know him? Yes and No.” The Fountain
Of Bakhchisaray does not sprinkle water on hearts.
“There is no way back to dreams and years.
A gravestone and the temple of Aphrodite.”
A lost voice searches for its echo
Up hill and down dale in c h a s m s.
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THE SILHOUETTE OF A WAR
The lowland of Waterloo is in Belgium
Belgium is a vast lowland
With a gloomy landscape
And renowned for its windmills
From the Middle Ages.
The phantom of Napoleon I saw
He was shaking hands with Hamlet
Amid the skeletons of winter trees
Nameless heroes of stormy history
And a water bottle was hanging on bushes
From a wounded soldier lying on the ground.
In the automobile going at full speed
All the mess of a defeated army
Was passing between the rainy windshield wipers
Whilst corbies were taking off in the darkness
A thick fog had landed on the steppe.
We were about to miss the plane,
Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” was longer than our way.
There was no time to think, no time to understand.
Night was longer than day, death longer than life.
Corbies disappeared at the borders of the horizon.
A silhouette playing violin in the rainy forest.
That would be the last line the soldier who had lost his way read.
It would also be a letter, and even a telegraph.
As long as a message had been received.
From whomever or wherever.
The herald of a death or a birth.
Before the shadow of a pigeon falls on the ground.
A continent newly discovered.
A mountain upon which fire is set at the summit
Could cause to forget everything in a while.
Wolves were howling in the dark.
The lowland of Waterloo is in Belgium
Belgium is a vast lowland
With a gloomy landscape
And renowned for its windmills
From the Middle Ages.
Waterloo, January 2018
