Too tired to continue this morning (a neighbor's dog barking all night),
I sit on a stone that leans on its side thinking of Nadezhda memorizing
Osip's poems before Stalin's thugs kicked in the door and spirited him
to where his flesh froze and his mind slipped on the tyrant's icy glare.

I rise and cross the river where its shores edge closer together. As the
sound of water disappears into my ears, I climb to where animals were
seen as belonging to their own nation and to be the bearers of messages
pleading for a reprieve, I howl: Now what? Old Stony Face, Now what?

 

 

 

Nadezhda: N. Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope. New York, 1970.
Osip's poems.: The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam. New York, 2004.
to where: Vtoraya Rechka (Second River), a gulag where the poet died from cold and starvation.
animals were seen: P.Shepard, “The Domesticators." In, Nature and Madness. Athens, GA.,1982.