Red as flesh in an open wound,

Bricks gaze up from a gash in the asphalt

Down an avenue in Kiev. 

Intent as the memory of ages they keep,

Preserved by state edict, they crunch

Under our tires as we speed

Toward the museums of the Vladimirs.

Cities lie beneath this city. Or beside.

Streets intersect, entwine, run parallel,

One below or before the other,

In mirror images, in simultaneous existences:

As the crystal blue of the Dnieper

Cuts between the old capital and the new

District of clustering towers

Of the proletarian housing dream,

Each looks across to the shimmering

Reflection of its twin.

Even our guide is called Vladimir,

And no heady vodka can assuage

The ache that history awakes in him:

It derives from the darkest reaches

Behind the stare of ikons, the sky

Of the Ukrainian steppes, the loneliness

Of siege towers when Rus awaited

The Golden Horde at the gates.

Other hordes have since then ridden down

These brick and cobbled roads, other tyrannies.

Even state edifices and their marble silences

Impose an awe, demand a different sanctity.

I, privileged catechumen, genuflect

Before the varied cathedrals of destiny:

I hear Mussorgsky in the feudal hall

Behind the oaken portcullis of Golden Gates,

The wail of peasants in the ululating 

Chorus of folk sopranos, and echoes drowning

In the pottery imbedded in the mortar

Of St. Sofia’s, where ancient fires burn wax

On gilt candelabra, and Yaroslav the Wise

Sleeps like a spider in his sarcophagus.

In jest, history has let a giddy farm swine

Leave his hoofprint on the plinfa,

As the fool’s gold of the mosaic pieces

Dazzled the avid minions of Khan Batu.

I am dazed as I descend the winding turns

Of Andreyevsky Street and gaze back

At the green cupolas of St. Andrew’s.

So is the stranger in his own moment

Of light more intimate with the ghosts

In the house of his hosts:

They stand clearer before him,

More at ease, less circumspect.

For there is no bad blood between, 

Nor recrimination, nor ageless pain.

Only the comfort of distance,

The pleasure of mutual surprise.

 

October 1990

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