Akkmatova Visits Alexander Blok, The Great Poet Poem by Leialoha Apo Perkins

So you sat in his living room, the Poet’s,
and noticed his gaze consumed
you and you dared not look back?
You averted looking back, held yourself
erect, though leaning in, slightly, to hear, listen,
taking him, taking it all in, word for word,
etching it all in your memory –his voice, the talk,
the sunlight on water, the water shimmering
like the silk of a girl’s dress at her first meeting
a boy. He spoke quietly that Sunday afternoon
you arrived, promptly, as he had said, agreeably,
to meet- Sunday, noon, sharp. His voice
modulated over a strange stirring near silence,
like a soft humming, like a poem being sung -
the poet, the room (big, glassed in) filling up
the hour that quiet afternoon. Outside,
the river boats slid, snails trailing smoke
behind them lazily, to trace what manner of air
waits upon the open sky, perhaps, and you there
-his eyes, serenely upon you as you looked
out again and the sun hung “raspberry”
“over clouds, like ropes.” And all the while,
the talk lay, soft as down,
in the “smokey blue gaze”
of his drunken eyes as well?