Half of the Path

The gloom of night is tangled in the turbines' hum,
And stars begin their voyage, sailing free…
The clouds, on their grey backs, now bear the numb
And weary aircraft of my soul with me.

The minutes fly—or years, or centuries—
I drift, a shadow, between earth and sky.
From all Eternity, my unseen net now sees
The moments spent with you that it can spy.

In some forgotten dream—so chaste and quiet—
A night-violet, love hides itself from sight.
Yet, overwhelming and with steadfast riot,
It squeezes my heart, foaming blood with its might.

Oh, thought of mine! So luminous and light of wing—
Fly to the realm of dreams that burned to embers!
With radiance of a star yet to begin its ring,
Fill all the shades of words no one remembers!

The hoary morning will arrive, unbid,
And stroke my brow with palms of sunlit rays,
Observing, with a joy most strange, amid
The coiling shapes of nights that slip away.

The blue will burst in through the silver door,
The dreams return—so parched and cool and deep…
My cracked and broken heart will bleed once more,
And burning verses from the wound will seep.

December 15, 1999

"O Rus, snow-white, in woven cloth of white enlaced,
A worshipper of the white color, from ages long now past."
N. Nikiforova

In weightless verses,
Sweetly-sounding, slow,
Through all the ages
Silver-white motives of Belovodye flow.

Surprisingly simple,
Your wondrous pattern lies –
A white-stone island
Underneath the blue lakes' skies.

A month, a day, a year
Of this blue-eyed land,
A flash – a white gull disappears,
Held by an unseen hand.

A shadow, white and frail,
Upon the windowpane will bloom,
And day will pierce the veil,
Emerging from its foggy womb.

And in the snows of January,
All sorrow melts away…
The Dawn embraces, weary,
The white-clad Rus in her array.

March 21, 2000

…And you will understand that every passerby
Begins to bear your likeness, suddenly,
By that Eternity which in their gaze does lie.
— Elena Marusenko

It happens sometimes – in the rush of faces, a blur,
You recall one, before you've even looked your fill.
A greeting in the sweep of a stranger's lash will stir
Your own restless heart to answer, against its will.

The Day's great meaning lies in meetings not by chance,
The Universe's pattern, lovely and complex, is cast.
You only must learn to recognize and enhance
A Star's own smile in the one you were meant to pass.

You only must know them, reach out, and hold fast,
Leaving behind all idle haste and folly.
The One Life gives the Chalice to us at last,
In eyes and in hearts, having spilled Eternity.

May 10, 2000

Forgive me, my bright Angel, clear of eye,
That I did not share your sorrowful road...
A mighty Spirit, measurelessly lone,
Into the chasm of the dark dared stride.

Forgive me, you who suffer and are dread,
Who plunge into the dungeons of Being's core!
In our snug world—both starry and sun-fed—
Who can begin to grasp the charge you bore?

You race, and drawing in your wake behind you,
Apostates, traitors, Judases of old,
Chosen by Fate, impassive and unkind to you,
To wield a justice that is stern and cold.

The more of them—the heavier the weight,
That drags you downward to the World's abyss,
Where no Light penetrates, and even in a spring day's date,
It's dank and dark in that unholy place.

But—the more dense the counter-current's flow,
The thicker the foul deep's obscurity,
The more arduous becomes the movement, slow,
For one immortal, born in Fire, to bear.

And there, at the nadir of the descent,
You'll stir the uttermost layers of the night,
Burning in insight's fiery, hot lament
Your sufferings and sorrows in that light.

And then your Spirit will unfurl its might,
Will surge aloft, both ringing and aflame,
And in each newfound sphere, will pour the light
Of torrents of its liberated Fire's claim.

And swift and bright your ascent will be,
Eternity will flash in that fire's spark,
And there will bloom, on some sunlit planet, free,
The happy ones who rose up from the dark.

And so today, I do not shut my eyes,
Nor scowl like some stern cliff against the sea,
When suddenly my spirit feels the burn and cries
From the touch of a Luciferian wing on me.

02.11.2000

Together with the sunset's final gleaming,
The aching of the soul is put to rest…
So, in the evenings, featureless and dreaming,
Assol, what visions visit your breast?

The distance lies behind white misty veils,
A seagull floats above the waves so light…
An unskilled soul, when every effort fails,
Follows the spring that vanished from its sight.

See how the prophecies are shed and falling –
A yellow leaf is circling to the ground.
And now the shadow of its lonely calling
Upon the immaculate white sand is found.

Although beneath the winds, so sharp and chilling,
The fragile meadow flowers sleep below,
I trust: behind the clouds, so stark and filling,
You'll find your Dream's smile, waiting in the glow!

The ice of hopeless, interminable hours
Will rapidly begin to melt and flow,
And from the mist, emerging with new powers,
The flaming scarlet of His sails will glow.

20.08.01

The eternal blue is waking from its rest –
A fragile frost of sliding, endless skies.
The sigh of that great Star which men call Wormwood
Now falls upon the forest in surmise…

The sun grows cold in hands that are benumbed,
A snowfall veils the temples, dense and deep;
The dew upon the cheek is drying up,
And leaves behind the crystals that it weep.

The houses and the gardens sleep in snow,
The heart's own voice is lucid, soft, and spent,
But from the fervent gaze of that same Star
A verse, molten, through the throat will vent.

January 2003

To my son, Anatoly

With eyes shut tight, I find my own way back
To that deathless temple of the radiant peaks,
Where dreams alight, and on their gentle track
Brush the tight-closed bud of the soul that seeks.

I feel the unseen movement, the vibration
Upon the keys of hanging glaciers, white –
And then begins the toccata of ascension,
Aflame with all the fires of snow and light.

And all the world's vain hustle stays below,
The receded years retreat and take their leave,
And standing with us on the summit's brow
Are all the ones who here did never cleave…

The sighs of clouds above the ice-fields' sheen
Are, as before, so weightless and so hushed…
I see again the standing stone, black, serene,
The river's silver thread, so brightly flushed,

The hoary dawn above a tent, so new,
The burning blades of ridges, sharp and grand…
My plane is starting its descent. The view –
I see the mountains. Hello, Bezengi-land.

June 29, 2004

A shield of silver light is gently laid
Upon the forest still asleep and deep.
The crystal heavens' surface starts to fade
As dawn awakens from its nightly sleep.

Here, the swift striving of the stream is banned,
Abruptly broken by a wall of stone,
While from the east, a golden wave of sand
Arrives to claim the land to be its own.

The chain of snow-clad peaks, a mighty sight,
Looks down, with clarity and menace, searing.
The stars are shedding their remaining light
Upon a plinth of granite, old and fearing.

Here, in the evenings, passionate and sharp,
The moon looks down upon the world below,
And over all the mountains, ringing, warp
The winds that with the dawn's first light will blow.

No sick, no wretched souls inhabit here,
They live without the burden of lament.
This world is not for many, far or near,
This world is yours alone, to which you're sent.

August 2004

I'll gather up the sky within my hand, and spill it on the mountains high,
And dewdrops like the droplets of the dawn will scatter far and nigh.
I'll fill my chest with one full breath of winds of silver, clean and fast —
And hear my heart's own voice command: "Now blossom! Love! Create at last!"

All hail, the fiery footfall of the heaven's knights of light!
All hail, the snowy Empress – our dear mother Earth so fair!
And birch trees in the quiet groves will whisper through the night,
And golden poplars will bow down their heads in silent prayer…

I'll tune the wind's own strings with my unmanageable hands,
I'll take a gulp of Life's own breath… My comrade, look and see
How distant constellations fall as verse on all the lands,
And rivers made of fire come flowing out of me!

The planet, fresh and new, will smile with gratitude so deep —
And that smile will ignite a whirl of joyful, fiery rays.
And then my heart will beat in rhythm with the Light's own pulse and leap,
And in the sky, the pattern of all future days will blaze.

10.08.2005

Unread. Unsaid.
What was poured out, can't be filled.
Not asked. Not willed.
But heard. And stilled.

August 10, 2005

By pathways of the Wind, by pathways of the Star,
The poets come to this our Earth.
Their footfall makes no sound, and ghostly is the bar
That bridges Lethe's misty dearth.

Their memory holds the sparks of ancient, primal fires,
And glimmers with an unknown Lore.
The scattered rainbows of our days and our desires
Greet them with light at heaven's door.

In bottomless eyes—a vast and unmeasured land,
Fields and crystalline mountains tall…
And northern lights of battles, where a bloody brand
Inscribes a fatal pattern's call.

And tears of morning dew, and smiles of flowers bright,
The freshness of the dawn's own haze,
The joyful whistle of the winds in heated flight
Above the swell of foreign bays…

And we shall live—in hovels and in palaces grand,
With songs and bread to be our pay,
As long as they, in hearts laid naked and unplanned,
Reflect the sky's immortal ray!

2005

A fleeting stroke of final words, a scrawl,
The sun, which dies within the eyes' dim glass.
Reflection of the dreams beyond recall
On images that shimmer as they pass…

Without a single backward look, a trace –
A step into the open door's dark mouth…
The smirking sunset, with its ironic grace,
Won't warm us now… But look, I pray, look south –

See how the brightest days go flickering by,
Collapsing in a shower of heavy sand;
The days we were alone, you and I,
And when, as strangers, barely hand in hand,

My fingers chanced to touch your own by chance,
And sensing that the path we had to tread,
Like some great river's unrelenting advance,
Would lead us somewhere, someday, ahead…

You will forgive me for the evening's light,
The bitterness of feast, the fire's cold ache,
The no-return of years that take their flight –
You will forgive. And for my own soul's sake.

Lost somewhere in the fabric of your fate,
The sea-salt truth of what was real is cast…
You cannot know how I appreciate,
I thank you for this very pain amassed!

How I would swallow back the unborn cry,
Would stumble – and then fall into the deep…
But now, within this moment starry-high,
As I am leaving – I beg you! – one look keep…

22.12.2005

The quiet rustle of ephemeral words
Grows clearer, kinder, ever closer, near…
The fragrance of the verses of Yesenin
Above a sleepless Paris courtyard here.

The sky is painted by the stars like moths,
A serene August evening, calm and deep.
The subtle scent of Avignonian roses
Embraces shoulders that a tremor keep.

The gentle whisper of the drowsing birches
Pours forth a languid, carefree, soft delight…
And an unasked question, it rehearses,
An Eternity that pauses in the night.

A rainbow from a candle sheds its light
Upon our life's eternal, premier play…
Oh, may the hot breath of the Angleterre night
Not scorch your soul and burn your dreams away!

25.03.2006

Within my breast – a singing, vibrant string,
A blade of flame, a living, healing dew,
The whistle of the winds, the stars of spring,
The Staff the Wanderer holds, the Mage's stern adieu…

Within my verse – the dragonfly's quick gleam,
Darkness's shards and oceans made of Light,
And the eternal, half-expressed, half-dreamed theme –
For which there is no answer yet in sight…

Within my fate – the current's ceaseless hum,
The life of Cosmos, flower, and of man.
The warmth of my own father's hand, and some –
An echo of Eternity in time's brief span.

What more is there to tell you, O my friends?
Such is my path. And this path – is my end.

10.09.2006

The rushing motive of the springtime's flow,
Adagio of birches and leaf-fall…
The ever-drowsing tide breathes out, and so
Replaces the cascade's scherzo with its call.

And, like a glyph inscribed on parchment old,
The sleepless mass of cliffs gleams in the night,
The flourish of the stars, the cursive, slow and cold,
Of the grey river, past the silent garden's site…

The Line and Sound. Pure matter in deep space.
Inconstancy in an eternal, fixed embrace –
So read and listen, think, and write your page!

A single ray shines in the Ocean, vast and free,
A drop of Life within the fiery mystery,
The music of the soul lets fall its rhyme in its sage.

22.09.2006

Beneath the rays of the high, noonday star,
As by the fated timelines it was willed,
A lonely Wanderer appeared from far –
A child of Emptiness and Fire, fulfilled.

The springtime overfilled his heart and breast,
The distance rang beyond the cloudy veil,
And Night splashed softly at his feet, possessed
As an eternally long, endless trail.

The fog would drift, the snow would fall and melt,
Becoming water, silent in its turn,
And grief was not a hardship to be felt,
And Man was happy, having naught to spurn.

But suddenly, a distant call, a sound
That with a sweet, sharp pain will make reply,
The soul will see, and—it will be homebound,
To lands of undreamed dreams that never die.

And he will carry, as he goes to roam,
This very pain, this light, this dual theme,
And he'll become a river, quiet, foam,
That holds the trembling moonlight in its stream.

01.09.2007