Chernivtsi Poem by James Brasfield

Such weight, Little Vienna,
snow falling across Europe, villages
lost to avalanche. People who return
say the streets are clean in Deutschland—
on the walks, a mere light dusting
from the newly fallen. Here
in the crosswinds, streets
and walks are buried in ice.
Wherever they are, Little Vienna,
shovels wait shivering.

Last night, who spread the path
of ashes on the walk? Some new tenant
not knowing what else to do
with a cigar box of ashes, handed down,
found far back in the wardrobe?—
the new tenant happy after a night
of polka and a waltz, losing his feet
with his new wife, arm
in arm, and saying later, 'Well,
there's this from yesterday?" . . .

Oh last night with stars scattered
across the blackest night—
ice giving way from the balconies . . .
The winter potatoes I peeled were stones
softening, deeply bruised.
Today, I'm nearly out of bread. Granules
of white mold brighten the heel of the brown loaf.
How those wisps of clouds closed in on the stars—
that sky now, a pale cotton curtain
about to fall from its string.

Already the path's covered as under a field
of crushed apples. Bags of ash wouldn't make
a foothold here where winter, as long
as snow falls, lasts a lifetime,
and not to remember the star lodged
in the branches, a crow now to light a limb,
and as it happens suddenly, those flocks
take flight. The gaps between them
are like those places where we hope to see
any star beneath moving clouds.

Does the old man hear those wings?—
in each hand a long poplar branch,
the knife-chipped tips probing
the furrowed millimeters of rippled ice—
or does the man leaning against the building
at the corner of Tolstoy Street?
He sings lightly to himself, staring
beyond the tin roofs, heavy with snow,
over the heraldic crests on the faded plaster
of your cracked facades, Little Vienna—

or bundled in black, returning to the village,
does the old woman under a scarf, sliding her feet
like a wind-up doll about to stop?
She leans into the knot end of a rope—
two bags of potatoes on a little wooden sled.