in Gorky Park

the sky was high

and blue, the crowds

we walked among

were nothing like

the crowds we knew

on shady gravel

paths we wandered

through a pleasure

ground whose numbered

days turned

round slow

spellbound, measured by

the stately ferris

wheel we rode

above the soviet

city and its river

into silver air

and down, to watch

our emptied seats

rising to the view

again accompanied

by the distant sound

of fiddles, the notes

of a folk dance

leaping and falling

through the still

unfolding leaves