Gogol

Photo by Nick Sorockin

The jacket worn thin like a pack of wolves.
His face a shard of marble.
Surrounded by his letters in a grove rustling
with scorn and errors,
the heart blows like a scrap of paper through the inhospitable
passages.

Now sunset prowls like a fox across this land,
igniting the grass in a flash.
The sky is full of hooves and antlers, and below it
the carriage glides, shadowlike, between my father’s
lit-up homesteads.

St. Petersburg lies at the same latitude as annihilation
(did you see the beauty from the leaning tower)
and, floating like a jellyfish around the icy city blocks,
there’s the drifter in his overcoat.
And here, wrapped in fasts,
is the one who was once surrounded by herds of laughter,
though they’ve long since faded into regions far above the treeline.
Humanity’s unsteady tables.
Look out: darkness burns a Milky Way of souls into the air.
So climb on your fire-chariot and leave the earth behind.