Marina Tsvetaeva Visits Galina Italyanskaya Poem by Daniel Brick

A Fantasy for Galina

My journey is over, I am with you,
Galina, in your home by the wooded lake.
If this visit had been planned, nothing
would be different. But my life is never
planned: things just happen, possibilities
get mixed up, jostle one another until
one drops into time and becomes a moment
of happiness, or sadness, or that curious
event which is both... Galina, while we
are together, once again close, may I call
you sister? With my family dispersed and
myself flapping like two-day-old laundry
in a cold wind, I feel bereft, lonely and
scared. If I gathered all my emotions from
the tenderest love to the most wicked hate,
fear would be the blanket wrapping them together.
If I prepared a feast of our favorite food
and had vases of flowers mingling their aromas
with the food aromas, fear would be the table.
Two autumns ago, fear taught me a grim lesson.
I was staying with an old aunt in her small town
outside of Moscow. One morning, we saw six men
in ill-fitting gray suits moping in the town square.
Each one fondled a heavy gun, as they told each other
lewd jokes, laughing harshly, pretending to shoot
into the sky. It was a strange stand-off, six men
with guns, and a whole village of frightened people.
An old man ventured forth, he talked with them
briefly, then hobbled off. An hour later,
a young couple carried their samovar to the spot
where they sprawled, and poured tea for all of them.
They set their guns at rest, talked quietly
with the couple, and two of them carried the samovar
back to their porch. By then, I was questioning my fear:
instead of diminishing it, the event swelled it. I felt
a confusion of fear and relief that battled inside me.
I wanted one clear immediate emotion, either fear or
relief. A car suddenly sped into the square, slammed
to a stop and the men with guns tumbled inside. The car
disappeared just as the day was disappearing around us.
Who were those men? Were we their target, or were
others in another unsuspecting village soon to find
themselves threatened? A whole day of fear, no outcome,
just its persistent presence... My relief is here
with you, it envelops me like a warm autumn day,
with trees casting their yellow light over us,
as if it were another source of sunlight. When we walked
down the wooded lanes, another light fell over us,
a shy red light, and I noticed you walk like me.
Our spirits have that much in common and perhaps
much more. All year my prayer has been, 'Oh, my Lord,
Jesus my Shepherd, give me the miracle I need.' And I
believe, I have that miracle but it is much smaller than
what I thought I needed. And that means my sufferings
must be smaller than I thought. Perhaps...
If you need to know my darkest thought, it is all those larks
are ravens. How can we be so wrong, so deluded to see
songbirds instead of predators. Even though the truth
is given to us, our longing for beauty is so keen,
we are deluded and wrong. Even now I hear birds singing
near and far, high above me in the immense sky or
on the branches of garden trees. And if you look
closely at the world as I read my verse, you will hear
birdsongs flying about in my poems, strong enough
to ease your heart, to accompany your dance, to occupy
your memory as the music of your souls... Push aside
the branches covered in thorns, and stretch forth your hand,
and grasp a rose. Breathe deeply its scent so its beauty
enters you. Then grab a dozen, and fling them over both
the wedding party and the funeral cortege, over the children playing
and the wooing adolescents. Present them to the adults who
serve and the old people who rest. This is what the poets
must perform: that which is struggling to be born must be released,
it has to be greeted and made to feel this place, this time,
this world is HOME. You see, Galina, my sister, even my darkest
thoughts give way to my brightest thoughts, what was dreaded
dissolves upon being being embraced as yet another needful thing,
and everything we summoned when we were desperate presents itself as HOPE.