Catholic Exchange » Pavel Chichikov

The Antidote

Pavel Chichikov — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Open the hatch inside my heart,
From there remove the painful dart
That works where I am most distressed,
Remove it from my wounded chest

To your living heart convey
The dart and lift the door away,
Place the weapon so it drip
The toxin from the point of it

It is your gift to neutralize
The poison of which sadness dies,
Then replace the dart in me,
It will not seep so morbidly

The weapon in the heart of me
Of unforgotten memory,
But keep the dart a while before
The health of you my heart restores

Not As You Are

Pavel Chichikov — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

What regret can you have? I have given you life -
Take the sharp end from a thorn and the edge from the knife,
The ache from the leg and the back, and never old age,
And from the enjoyment of sin remove me the wage,
Let me devour the surplus without any work,
Let every error of choice be an innocent quirk

I have given you life to enjoy all the beauty I make -
Let me use up what I have and undo the mistake,
Let me have health in abundance without any pain,
And if I abuse it permit me to have it again,
Let me have privilege, rank without any duty
Let me loot, pocket and steal without calling it booty

Let me throw craps for a living, come seven eleven,
Let me take chances and gamble my way into heaven,
Let me be good if good is the way to get in,
But if there's no heaven there's nothing as pleasing as sin,
Let me live, Master, this life, and live it forever,
Not as you are little piglet, and so I say ‘never'!

Not as you are little pig, as you grunt at the trough,
A windfall of apples I gave you, desist and be off!

The Flesh of Earth…

Pavel Chichikov — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The flesh of Earth was sick today
And did not rise from sleep,
Summer forests drained to gray,
The oceans black and deep

Sleepers did not wake from dreams
Nor flowerings unfold,
Desiccated lay the streams,
Blood and flesh were cold

Who will raise my corpse to life
And cover me with skin?
Who is the surgeon with a knife
That cuts existence in?

Unless one comes to cure the ill
There is no life to come,
To make the streams and oceans fill
With His viaticum

Morning Snow

Pavel Chichikov — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Wash your hands in morning snow
Before the scars of earth have scored
The skin of it with iron plows,
Trampled, fouled and ignored

Weightless when it falls and stark,
Soundless in enormity,
Numberless, a jeweler's work,
Intricate severity

Melted in the human hand
A phase transition makes it run
Enough to baptize every man
And woman underneath the sun

And as the Lord came down from light
Weightless till He took His form,
The snow comes down, a silent night,
A sudden purity is born

Release

Pavel Chichikov — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

She was looking for something to save her from death
Or at least to put obstacles under his feet,
Keep him from rising to conquer her breath,
Smother her heartbeat, the merciless thief

Perhaps if she filled up the room with a crowd
To surround her with bodies he wouldn't get through,
Raised up their memories tall as a shroud
To hover and cut off the phantasm's view

All of my friends will surround me — they're dead —
But even their vapor can raise up a mist —
You hover about me and sniff at my dread
O specter that squeezes my heart in your fist

They stood in a crowd around her, but one
Of the dozens of dead ones, familiar, came near:
I am the specter you dreaded, the one
Who by day and by night and in dreaming you feared

I am your friend, you have known me always,
Yet you avoid me and turn from my face,
I am as gentle as long summer days,
The shadows that stretch over daylight like lace

But only be still and do not take fright
At the sound of my footsteps that come on the stairs
Never say I am a thief in the night
Who comes to his victim by night unawares

You have always remembered me, always have known
A friend to defend you from all that can injure,
I have a master of light on a throne
Who judges most gently, he is no avenger

Let these light spirits go back to their places
For they have their joy, new bodies and faces,
You will have also the heart and the peace
My master will grant you — but first your release

To Cover the Wounds

Pavel Chichikov — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Within the old fort, in the woods overgrown
Near the mound where they buried the magazine
To store their cruel iron a thicket grows —
A young doe naps in the afternoon

Behind the green leaves her rough bed hides
And winding wands secure her in shadow,
The air is grayish and cool inside,
Sun on the ramparts splashes yellow

A song bird's whistle, she does not wake
Or stir at the warning until I draw near,
But then she unfolds her legs and takes
Umbrage at me though there's nothing to fear

Then she could never have slept nearby
When the trees had been cleared for a field of flame,
And officers shouted and men would lie
In the rifle pits to take their aim

The long guns lofted their hundred pounds
And crashing, not song notes, came out of their mouths —
Better it is that the men are gone
And the fort in green leaf to cover the wounds

Who Made You for the Dark?

Pavel Chichikov — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Darkling beetle, black and shining jewel,
What jeweler could have formed you, with what tool?
What burr or jig or pliers set your shape,
On what suspended rod your armor draped,
On which round mold your head and thorax bent,
For whose joy were those elytra meant —
What burin graved the parallels that run
From point of wing to where the head's begun?

Your mandibles that twist, your eyes that globe,
Your furred antennae delicate that probe
The galleries that run beneath the bark
Of dying trees — who made you for the dark?

She Grips Me Tightly

Pavel Chichikov — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The one who falls, is falling reaches for me,
The weakened hand grips tightly as it can,
That which pulls her backwards grips her firmly,
Down into the blackness of the wound

Desiccated blood, not salt, it does not weep —
Cavity in vision, God's excision,
Not dream or vision, nor a sleep,
No ghost or shadow, visible transition

A pulling force that overmasters all
Will to overcome, no one evades
The entropy of disassembled molecules —
What has been put together is unmade

And yet she grips me tightly and holds on
I am as helpless, but I am her son

A Crime of Blood

Pavel Chichikov — Fri, 25 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I thought about the city precinct house
Where fierce corrupt detectives in white shirts
And ties enforced the scared obedience Of those who lived around them in apartments

Prisoners were beaten on the street
Before they even entered to be booked,
And if their fists were sore they used their feet — Through their window secretly I looked

I saw the face of Man, a murderer's
Flushed countenance enflamed with rage and zeal,
And that proud smile of power over other Beings, demon-pleasured ecstasy revealed

But they did not see me as I passed by,
Quickly so as not to draw their minds
Away from their intentions, nor would I
Dare to interfere with their designs

Yet I would remember one they beat
Until he died, cadaver in a cell,
And wonder where the souls of us will meet — In prison purgatory or in hell

For we are all complicit, one to one
Who see a crime of blood and turn aside
As those who left the scene of crucifixion
Saying: It was Christ, not me who died

Night Rain

Pavel Chichikov — Fri, 18 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The midnight rain deforms all footprints
Even in the garden of Gethsemane —
How can we follow what no one can see?
The weight of Him bends not even the violets

What trail or trace in the souls of us,
Where the unmagnetic compass
What clue in the wind, what feeble scent?

Follow Him deeper, He is within,
Follow the dark to find the light
Though rain may fall before midnight