Babouschka-Matrioschka-Motitschka-Blau
Sequence set in 1890's Riga, 1917 Russia and post 1918 Austria
Red Sickle Day at Last
These birch trees could not stop them,
the Reds burn in my eyes yet again,
they are closing now, no escaping,
our dacha folds under in flame.
Thank God, no tell-tale cigarette papers:
their hieroglyph lines all heart scanned.
This day, no water lifts clean at our pump-head,
just fire as hard as heavy as lead.
This bath-house soap-sliver has melted;
the second class icon has no place;
they'll find me with you, Dear Fool, waiting,
a scythe's flick will disclose your cold face.
Matrioschka: You Spent Your Whole Life Not Going Back
I read your birth certificate, November, 1917, Totma:
Babouschka's walked from Riga, to Vologdya:
via Petersburg, from one camp to another:
ice inside eyelids:
birth at minus thirty degrees:
did you see sunlight slip round fir trees,
pause over Vologdya's unquiet fields,
lick at rifles? As your lips cracked her nipples,
did you observe how your breath etched ice crystals
on the cracked window? Did the guard's footprints spill
echoes, passing her hiding space down by the ice-house?
When they found her, did you both see unease in their faces?'
Matrioschka
When you told me,
you frowned over the album,
dropping butterfly wings,
recalling Babouschka
that day, slipping between scarred birches,
blueberrying. I saw through
sunlight on words, indigo
on her lips, fingers and pinafore.
You said, how the bear deep in his cave
uncurved his furcoat, losing his dreams,
how Baboushcka ran, tripped, berries falling
as pearls. I could see her stumbling,
the bear, round as the cave, surprised at
the child's size, the short winter, following,
trees parting, flying like a fan folding
or flick book pages, flicked open, closing.
Prayer to St. Anthony
for Mother, Yadviga Rosina:
did you find that key in the pale stream
I see you straddling in the long ago winter dream
under a low horizon, where you are tall as men,
yet huddling small as children hiding,
you and your brother crossing fingers
that bleed roses onto the iced skin of water as you pray
to the saint for lost causes who might listen
inbetween birches and streams, your father stalking forward,
his eyes searchlighting trees and clouds,
arms reaching over the steppes and forests, to find
Saint Anthony's icon face growing as hard and wide
as the ice wall, behind which I can see you hiding,
you and your brother, intertwined, and St. Anthony becomes as wild
as a stork that rises to turn herself into a white shield,
raising her wings with the power of the wind,
sweeping an avalanche of ice tundra over the steppes,
to keep you safe as her brood.
Babouschka: Alpha or Omega?
It used to make me jump out of my skin:
when I heard footsteps beside us echoing.
The Holy Fool for Russia is the one I later conjured.
Back then it was a child angel shadowing us:
the third person on the Leeds pavement succumbed
sometimes to Father Hum's Latin incensed incantations,
he was High Church Anglican, not Orthodox, this was the sixties.
I had to ask, aware of the loss of you,
or do I mean me, about to happen, despite what we promised,
who is the third always walking beside us? I feel the steps
on wet pavements now might be those that mounted the veranda.
seeking the place laid as expected, the empty chair,
the food steaming: piroshkis, pickled red cabbage, or even just kasha,
the samovar puffing out clouds sweet as incense,
the black jam spoon on the saucer, the tea blacker: upstairs
the feather bed plumped, for you might want to visit.
The Icon of the Black Madonna over the candle
flickers. Is it finally your footsteps pausing,
returning, undoing the beginning again?
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