Once I thought that if I walked with you to the endof Russian literature, bumped into Yesenin and hissoft words, mingled with the throng that formedaround Pushkin or waited patiently at the SenateSquare while you threw pieces of Blok, Akhmatovaand poor old Mayakovsky to eager readers whopecked at your references, I would come tounderstand all that you represent.
But it was in St. Petersburg by the Kryucov wherethe water flows down to the Neptune Arches that allof European literature streams by, joins in yourverse, becomes a chorus for your song that issteeped in old melodies, slow rhythms of centuriesgone by, the forgotten music of Ovid and Sapphofills the air and the light grows stronger, the chorusbecomes an echo that carries the voices of Virgiland Villon over the void pushing us forward and atthe same time calling us back to the magnificentstructures, the perfect poems that pass before us.
There was always the trap door, the false floor, andfalling through the mountain, the mist and themorning after, and here on the open road a thimbleof Ariosto slipped into the cocktail so the readersstaggered past the sleeping guard as the camp firesblossomed into fragrant flames and words that oncedanced rose into the air tapping lightly on the ear sothat when he spoke of Homer his lines were salt seashells and foam and he never once had to say, “Inmy youth I travelled with him.”
At any moment he could hurl the ancient sand fromanother time, The Divine Comedy and Dante stingyour eyes, you stumble onto the marketplace wherepoets hang their verses in brightly marked stalls andspeak their poems in the language of the bluebirdand the robin. There are a hundred voices callingout “I am the tour guide follow me” and this tug onyour sleeve leads you down another street andfurther away from the end of Mandelstam’s poemand deeper into the lush lands, the forgottenfoothills of poetry and prose where the door to alocked century remains open.
Breathless I tried to keep up with him. I could hearthe hoofs on the cobblestone and feel the sharpestpoints of literature piercing me and I loved thatfeeling and later I would pass my fingers over thepage the way someone would run a hand over an oldscar so that I could relive the moment when I wasjarred out of my sleeping day and into the force oflife.
