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Peter Gibson

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Leaving Moscow

‘You will feel it when you go outside’ he says.
‘Wrap up warm, hat, coat, gloves, and don’t forget,
it’s half an hour to the airport, at least.’

The cold waits outside to chew me like a great beast.
‘A childish torturer to burn you with a hot teaspoon,’
he laughs.
A Russian proverb I think - maybe not.
I must go home.

I am leaving Moscow, this muscular city -
not Carl Sandburg’s Chicago:
not the hog butcher of the world
though it has big shoulders.

This city is more the prophet of the world
for it has all the loneliness and vastness.
prophets need.

                  ...And there is pain enough
                     In each small tilt of snow.

The driver’s voice shrills in my thoughts:
‘I’ll try not to leave you on Noskva Street,
with the whores and the pimps,’ he quips.
‘When you go home, tell your friends about us.
Tell them about the homeless.
Tell them we fear this second Second Coming
and tell them it does not work.’


 

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