Borodin's On the Steppes of Central Asia

Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute.  But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute.  Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is stained with victory.

Voice always waiting, waiting, wanting.
The stars are real but remain unused,
Unused and unhurt.

I saw wind and beauty wrong
(the arms should have been longer)
Wonder understands Miss Change lovingly.

It takes feet to stand.
The moon lies and memory matters.
Come, sit, watch the bad words with me in darkness.

Sound person.
High earth.
Ask the song fingers for something less boring.

We just like love,
And time and life and heart and
Something to be different, new today.

Feel the day
Way away, so far away
That day the thought train lost a good man.

Spirit never dies but neither
does it always return just
because we
need it
to.