by Pavel Chichikov
They played gin rummy in a yellow room
While snow built up the fire escape –
Cold canvas of it, stuffings of it
Soft and lofting piles of it
On the wall the steel-hulled Pruessen sailed
White sails on prussian blue
And a white clock turned black hands
Within a wheel of arms
All four were there – two sisters and two husbands
Though three are dead and one is very old
And the room and the snow
Are in my mind
The duvet, the feather comforter of snow
The bars of the iron stage outside rimmed up and down
With freshly fallen heaven feathers
The cold street with planes of pavement rising
Did they think: the cold year passes, I shall die?
The cards were rosy, slick and thin
Stiff and square – they slapped them down –
How young the old and dead can be
Night the window covered black and red
Shrunk and filled with spinning wheels of snow
Round lacy hexagons
Dissolving sharp and cutting on the tongue
How can I remember, hold, the dead ones here?
Capacious memory, round theater in a sack
I see them play – how lovely that they lived
And lovely too the ship, a white-winged sea bird
For one of them had sailed the south for coal
Aboard the last great ship of trade
To use the wind across the sails as wings –
Then let another wind, great bird, be with him now
Visit Pavel's website at Grey Owl Press.
