Graham High
Negative / not negative
The Russian sky is vast.
The Russian light is single and dominant
- has learned from its past
a kind of totalitarian ambience.
The continental climate is always overcast.
It is relentless as snow.
The grey light seeps into one’s bones.
from above, from behind, from below,
a creeping petrification that grants
endurance - and a kind of permanence.
The snow glares down like a constant
question, on the retina, that blackens the brain.
Just entering it each day is like a death,
- stepping off into the ambiguous light,
like a film untimely ripped from the camera's
womb, the light blinding the thin strip
of cellulose, the fragile continuum of images.
Prefiguring the blast of light
that engenders total black out.
People on the street are in contrast
with their own life, like walking in a negative,
the thread of film rolling past,
and carry an inner light against the dark
or a solid blackness against the light.
But the difference between black and white
is negligible. A small matter of perception.
Rooks build black constellations in the
enmeshed sky, and mimic the white nests of night.
And they say the Russians are a grey people.
Living in the thin penumbra between
the on-coming darkness and the on-going light.
Page(s) 72
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