BOTANICAL GARDEN

POSITANO

JULY 1997, BUSINESS AS USUAL:

MAGRITTE: DOMINION OF LIGHT

SEVEN CARDS

 

BOTANICAL GARDEN

 

The winter is still

and snowed flowerbeds are dreaming

of the butterflies drawn

on the windows of the hothouse

where the red lips of Anthurium

lean towards Aglaonema.

Dendrobium is calm and sorrowful

and prim is Paphiopedilum insigne.

Laelia anceps opens its rose enigma and is wed

to Begonia Bettina.

 

I see Ms. Tomson walking from the porch

to take a tidy look at Clerodendron,

already cared for, watered and left to blossom

by the gardener with beads of sweat

maturing on his glistening forehead.

Meanwhile the colonel wearing a shining, creaking helmet

is out in the garden,

caressing Acalypha with his yellow finger.

 

Remember how we were disappearing

in Hovea Belmor forests,

inhaling an insane female aroma of Hoffmania discolor.

 

The end of list. It's January, night.

Grandfather has just finished his translation.

Machine gun series of the old steel Underwood

are still reverberating in the air.

Grandmother smokes her cigarette,

and from my bed

the world is wavy, gray and flowing

on the black-and-white lactating screen.

 

The snowflakes long for light

and merge with the list of solemn Latin names,

with the vaporizing smell of Eucalyptus:

sweet influenza of childhood

set in the freezing desert of the Eurasian city.

 

 

POSITANO

 

Mosaic Mediterranean colors: milk and soot.

Rectangular fragments of stone houses

scattered on the cliff,

touched up by the moss of trees.

Spacious clay vase broken,

pieces stopped short

of falling into the sky.

 

Invisible scooters - buzzing insects

are born by the cliff

and disappear into the cliff,

carrying someone’s souls

to their destinations.

From point zero to zero:

fireflies of life, smoldering

after the volcano erupted.

 

There is sparse parking here,

but John Steinbeck

did not need a parking spot.

He drank his scotch in oblivion,

good man of letters,

one of 6000 alphabets.

Then vanished

before it’s to late,

mourning life at it’s conception

as a real poet at dawn,

when the first boat departs

for an unnamed island.

 

JULY 1997, BUSINESS AS USUAL:

 

Reverberating sounds of jets

delivering emissaries everywhere.

 

Summits growing more representative

outshadowing deep death valleys.

 

Damp jungle air gently caressing

carefully burnt faces of perpetually investing Floridians.

 

5 p.m., Sunday, news time,

anchors getting down to the core of the events:

 

Clintons’ vacation in Spain, march in Northern Ireland,

10 year olds shooting at the British Royal Commandos

 

with water pistols, ready for the game,

July 5 fireworks in Vermont, delayed news of the Independence.

 

Everyone turns the TV off, dresses up in anticipation

of dinner with close ones and comes to an evening mass,

 

parking a car properly on designated lots.

Bottomless dark TV screens live their own independent lives:

 

Hong-Kong skyscrapers casting shadows

over the century's no man's land,

 

disguised Khmer Rouge in dusty fatigues          

relentlessly advancing along the streets of Phnom Penh

 

toward the airport, armored personnel carriers 

sporting banners with Jean Paul Sartre looking prospective and positive,

 

as if he is still sitting over glace at a table in a boulevard cafe.

 

 

MAGRITTE: DOMINION OF LIGHT

 

First comes the light, being

the aperture of dark as the evening

 

stays still. One can guess

the trajectory of the night beings

 

invisible, almost insensible.

The brushstroke precision makes them blend

 

with what forever waits behind two lit windows.

Trees at the front are dark arrows

 

grown from the unimaginable into the painting's

essence, which will last as long as it

 

allows one not only to see, but to breathe it in.

Even afterwards this will remain 

 

a glass, infinitely transparent. The orderly facade implies

some sturdy-settled household. The trees

 

are well tended but not trimmed. Beyond the fence

there is a garden, perennially rustling.

 

One cannot hear a sound, feel a movement, yet

one knows, there must be a sound since the light

 

and a sound are reflections of the same.

There is no street sign, number or a name.

 

Only the signs of a human omniabsence:

little silent pond, part of a bay, or else

 

a strait, that harbors quiet boats beyond the frame.

It feels as if an opaque story of a family

 

nests behind the house, in the garden

that is the insects' paradise, the world of tireless rodents.

 

Vestiges of life are stirring in the back rooms.

The walls hold reflections of the perpetuating shadows,

 

not moving anymore, but paused in their domestic eternity:

holding a teacup, a knife, someone's hand stretched in

 

an attempt to reach for something,

that it will never reach. The only link

 

between the objects is the sky, as unassuming

as the sky could be in its generously aimless

 

evening lightness. Its axis is the streetlamp—

a counterpoise and the foundation of an ample-

 

ness of the void. We try to leave

it in the self-saving and comforting oblivion,

 

as we turn away from the visage of putrefaction,

from the move into motionlessness.

 

There canvas echoes passion of suppression. This is a dominion

of light, the world where everyone is gone.

 

 

 SEVEN CARDS


 

 

I have a box with seven cards,

my hope and the flame of my nights.

 

The first has a window into the sunny land,

although the glass is frosted and one can't see the end.

 

This card is worth all other cards:

it has the sky, stone, ice and three thousand birds.

 

The second card still smells of smoke;

on the burnt surface it shows a block,

 

that can't be walked, or driven, or lived in.

It harbors frozen breath of sky, that is now crystalline.

 

The third card is plain, it’s black and white,

though through a small window it shows light

 

above treetops’ cathedral spires.        

This card is almost mute, like a smoldering fire.

 

The fourth one tells the story and makes me smile.

It is a circus train, it is a wild

 

life of style behind the smooth veneer.

It sparkles with smirks, but leaves one with a fear


 

 

that is indefinite. The box has a fifth card,

old and yellow, long ago cracked.

 

It shows the stony road, crisp night,

scents of mountain flowers,morning light

 

and of a woman. This is a letter that was sent

when I was born. I'll keep it to the end.

 

The sixth card’s been played too many times,

and flows in a stream with hundreds of names.

 

The last card is silent. There no one can speak.

The wall is lit. Every brick       

 

is lit by light that can't be seen but can be sensed. The one who feels this light is blessed.

 

 

This is a letter to a floating heart.

This one is the last in a box – just an old postcard.

 

Poems by Andrey Gritsman

 

 

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