Summer of 1988
The drizzle that sauntered through the night
freshens the air after this summer’s unanticipated drought.
I step from the porch and think of Pasternak
roaming the ruins and reconstructions of the ‘teens.
He may have ridden a tram with Mandelshtam
(who at that time was still alive),
or run with Akmatova and her husband,
(the former yet uncensored, the latter uncondemned).
Futurism on the movie posters
and also in the movies themselves,
the civil war, Trotsky leading general
of the Red Army (unbanished, unmurdered, still in the photographs),
the Zhivago not conceived, no,
not yet a necessity. How the snow must have fired
the pines near Gruzia
with the scarlet-orange morning glories of hope.
They said the rivers would run with vodka and the factories
would rise from the ice as crystal palaces.
Rock forces the translucent ices to its own haggard shape…
A window rattles across the street.
An orange and white cat shakes herself and goes in off the roof.
Milk and cat chow, Pasternak,
think of it!
Nowadays the Komsomol Youth rock and roll in Leningrad.
And they sell Zhivago in the bookstalls. And even right here, the bronze grass
that mats the yards wears a new sheen, the leaves
long pooled in the gutter shall finally rot.
The leaves still on the maples, once curdled with excess light
rest loose and buoyant.
Leaves and time, cats and precipitant wants,
a brief respite from the drought
reticulates the sunlight
among frayed clouds.