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Grasses bleach in the meadow fields: behind the high barbed wire fence the darkening cup of the woods yields the watch-tower’s uneasy defence.
It is forbidden to go there, grandmother says, chops chives, spreads butter on rye bread. Each round she slices towards her just fails to cut into her. We watch the knife’s thin blade.
Poppies pepper the verges, paths are powder tracks. We gather mushrooms, sticks, the feel of roots under our feet. Sunlight slips from our backs: the tower pulls and harvests us. Shadows shoot
into our chests. We edge up unsteady steps, reach the platform. It’s almost dark up here. We find a brass star. Peer over the parapet. Our house stares back, small, all windows barred.
Silence hangs in this heat-haze. Later, we hear of the tread of sentries. How no-one got away. Now featherbeds air on windowsills as she shares bits of stories. They drift in sunmotes for days.
You remind me of Dietrich, or Garbo in a station restaurant, or maybe of Piaf with Picasso against a yellow Lautrec poster. I see you in profile, your half smile.
But it's how I see your head turning that makes me think back on stories you might have been painting, although gone from the place where I listened, drinking ‘Pig's Blood’, and our waves of talking washed with 'partners', ' resisting' and ' light -change'.
I suspect Picasso of the clairvoyance of sunlight, Baudelaire's colour poetry of Bull's Blood, and Dietrich of stinking of Gauloises. You might have said, Bogart wasn’t getting enough, inventing distance, like Garbo,
reminded me of my once-upon-a-time uncle, hymning Lilli and Piaf in the hollow nights of Resistance, preaching Baudelaire, and the peeling of grapes, dying of Riesling, and sexual ambivalence.
Here children gather like feathers on pebbles, crabbing brown fingers on gnocchi with butter, or hurtle in a windspray of rock-climbing, while I accuse you of loving too much.
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 hieroglyph tell-tale papers: yet St. Anthony gives me no answer. 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 falls from her place; they’ll find me with you, Dear Fool, waiting: a scythe’s flick must disclose your cold face.
Again light slides its beads through these three windows, seeps inside these white beds, flits along the drips, slots into tubes, alights on Sister’s smile, bedpans and broomsticks, lands on Olga’s specs, blinds her eyes, fingers her prayered hands, hoops the loop overhead, disconnects. From the waiting room, Baba Yaga creeps in, hides.
Maybe Olga’s questions somersault the rails; she’s wondering, has Konrad watered the cucumbers, told their son about the blue arrow on her left breast, pointing to an x. She takes out four needles, the pattern she’s picked at Rosina’s news, she’s waited so long, and sees an image of baby’s face. The salt and bread: the Priest.
She counts stitches, unravels hours. Baba Yaga’s a shadow dealing cards, tangling yarn, observing a visitor trailing sweetpeas and dangling keys, nurses watching time passing the clock. Next door, a drip drapes the ‘Hospital Waste ’ bin. Baba nods the night in. Staff strobe the dark with torches splitting dreams that drift as dust between three pills, a beaker of water, and someone shouting, ‘I told you, switch off that light.’
Baba grins: the Three of Spades. She puts it on the Queen, promising, ‘Saint John’s Eve, by midnight’ with breath so hot, Olga throws off her sheet; this time her feet will reach the floor.
By the screen, Baba smirks, binding time, shuttling cards, knotting yarn; waits for daylight to bring Konrad to her.
Note: Baba Yaga: fate, a witch, in Russian folklore
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