Night deep black outside,
Stars blinding in the dome of heaven,
South of Lake Ontario, and Canada, beyond.
Wind moans around old cornices
Comes blowing from the northeast,
Brings a vision so mysterious, time and place a
blur,
Wind susurrating sibilance into feeling, then to
words.
From across the fearful maritime,
Across the North Atlantic,
Where steppes roll deep and frigid
Into vast and nothingness
The gypsy wraps her fringed shawl tight,
Clasps a volume of her verses,
Words on desiccating pages,
She’s been writing all the evening
In the small hut’s candlelight.
She hurries toward the fireplace glow
That flickers through the window
From a cottage on the shore;
Lonely on the "zinc-gray" Baltic
Brodsky pours some vodka there,
And there they read together,
The frozen world forgotten,
In their rich and blending tones
Reading verses in a language
I do not know but understand.
I’m organic in this fabric I created out of
nowhere,
Their stanzas transcending my prosaic here and
now,
And as quickly as it came to me,
That slice of life from somewhere
Long ago and just imagined
Dissolves into the curling wind,
Fringed shawl no longer tangible,
Dark eyes shuttered, voices quiet, and
The battered covers closed.
The firelight fades, the hearth grows cold,
And real although it was for some long and
Vibrant moments, Brodsky’s dead, his gypsy
vanished,
With nothing left but timelessness,
Visitation inexplicable and fading.
Outside now the wind picks up,
I strain to hear faint tolling bells
From an old church on some far and blown cold
shore,
And coming from the Maritimes,
I pause and sniff the air
The memory smells of salt.
