For E. R.
All of Russia – right up from the trackless
road-to-nowhere median belt,
to the pole at the top of the Arctic
where the ice has started to melt,
inexhaustible Finnish drizzle,
Tauride lion stretched out in the heat
– it all found its place in your grizzled,
thinning-haired, dark-eyed head.
Blok and Khlebnikov crooned up your choler,
so they should carry the can.
The symptoms: hysteric, euphoric,
Moscow-in-January rant;
plus Petersburg garret distemper
in June, when nothing makes sense;
and wondrous Trigórskoe September –
equilibrium, reached only once.