i must complete
this morning's traditions,
smoothly as best i can,
transition the dead bolt turning.
there is the feast to
prepare,
eulogies to compose
to heroes frozen to the floors
of transit points,
vast blue-iced miles
alter nothing
no amount of looking can change
the distant truth
that these wrinkled traditions
possess us
like great white birds flying
to siberia,
i am old here without
your tongue
it is foreign,
as foreign as yours and mine.
Nadezhda Mandelstram, wife of the Polish-Russian poet, Osip Mandelstram who was sent to die in the Gulags for writing poetry critical of Stalin. She memorized almost the totality of her husband's writing knowing that the physical copies would be too dangerous to keep and would be destroyed by the Soviet authorities
