Memories

In museums, libraries, and theater lobbies
Do you remember those women - typically, in their years?
Behind the stands, between the shelves, with tomes or with programmes
So courteous and fragile, pedantic just a shade

They sat upon the stools, they knew all the exhibits
They wore worn and strict suits, which fit them perfectly
They handed us the books with just a little wariness
They greeted all the actors, with just a little reverence.

Will someone post their photo
Or write a little book
Or script a single comedy
To remember all those women,
Those women in their years?

In a frozen, golden age
Daddy’s pulling on my sleigh
Riding towards lands far and wide
I.

Through the yard and through the park
to the snowy boulevard.
Trolleys with their horns are slapping,
Tram cars with their boots are stomping,
It all sparks, and more than all,
Snow.

We were seeing trolleys off
We were reaching the hilltops.
I soared down, my breath a puff
Fluff!

If you take that tram right there
there will be another hill.
Father pulls a little girl
I’ll meet her one day for sure
Soaring down out of the blue
You.

So why now, within our cars
Do we resent the winter months?
Hard to drive, we have no sleigh.
The sun scolds us every day
Bringing from within the snow mounds
Or from within those frozen times
Light.

My birthday, and my mother takes
Out of the cupboard, pretty plates and bowls.
"Here!" on this day I get a plane
from the button-sized girl with the yellow bow.
What should you tell the nice girl right away?
Let's go and play!

My birthday. The cake's barely touched.
Your palms your shoulders and, don't go there!
The quivers of half words become too much
I think I’ve spent a bit too long on prologues.
What should I tell the girl at times like this?
We kiss.

My birthday. Table set for two.
We are not young, just like these wines.
All of the depths and joys I have lived through
Are in your beloved contours: all my life!
What can I tell my girl these days?
We gaze.

My birthday. It is always loved.
I've never whined as year by year crawled by.
As my appearance in the living hall
Joined with the simple rhymes of summer light.
I'll croak, don't keep the dates of death or grieve,
just throw a party on my birthday every year.

To drive onto the shoulder, walk out to the rocky beach,
to scald the palms with Lake Superior.
To play tag with the mountains in the Colorado landscape.
To hear the last ode of the enamored agave.
Nostalgia for these open spaces will never leave me alone.
And, maybe, one day, I'll return.

The sun hangs over the sea, tequila in my hand.
Songs in the car - and the flights of the roads start to ring.
The irrepressible strength of books, plays, and sculptures.
A cafe beneath palm trees, the alluring smoke of kabobs
Nostalgia for this happiness will never leave me alone.
And maybe, one day, I'll return.

Dad, mom, two grandmas, a wary small boy.
Drunken chatter about the eternal. Unprecedented degrees of love.
But my daughter has long learned to hablar on languages diferentes.
And it'll only count that, as I hope, I have made her happy,
the one who I received myself for unexpected happiness as a gift.
Nostalgia for all of these people will never leave me alone.
Nostalgia for this life will never leave me alone.
And you know, one day, I'll return.

In parks
we argued over books and kissed.
The beer
brought us towards stands and windows.
We waited
for soccer and theater seasons.
The letters –
it’s silly to say! – enveloped and hand-written.
These three guys were alive.
But, recently, through the internet,
I learned they are no longer present.

Vova
stopped by a torn blood clot.
Yura
dissolved in alcoholic mirages.
Tolia…
Couldn’t find what happened to Tolia…
And I
couldn’t even say that we were friends:
parks, beer, soccer, girls…
I don’t even know if I would have remember them,
and now-I do.

Three?
I think, probably a few more…
Maybe,
one of them has already been reborn.
Somewhere
he cries over a lost toy.
Loved now by a completely different family…
But in frames, the same photo remains.
And his daughter presents to his widow
her new young man.

I’ll remember
(maybe, we’re again on the same planet)
Vova –
enormous, dominant, rowdy,
Yura–
Munchausen of his own love stories,
Tolia –
the chief of all school hooligans.
University and school classmates.
As if the zones of youth are no more:
kvass barrels and siphons…

I know:
we do not die, we do not vanish.
To hell!
I am so comfortable here, in this life, with you!
With those,
who feel warmth when I am near.
With those,
with whom I feel warmth when we are together.
Just like those three felt…
The trolley takes us to marvelous parks
for only four kopeks!

Can we decide, though we remember everything,
Just what and when we start remembering?

For example, I’d remember a seven year old boy,
who, looking forward to absolute bliss,
begged his grandma to take the trolleys
to ride from end to end, trip to trip.
And summer would live again in memories.
And I would simply ride, no need for a script.

But then, when in a hospital room, tears spilled easily,
an unrecognizing brain, eyes that could not see,
That, I do not want to remember.
How I’d love to learn to set apart, on call,
what is left on the bottom and what is thrown to the shore!

To remember falling in love, but not feeling like strangers.
To remember epiphanies, but not the interruption of logic.
To remember water flowing, but not how it turned into salt.
To remember the steep ones back when they were still gently sloping.

It’s as if I’m outside my own memory.
Longing to enter and disrupt this eternal cycle,
I pound and I pound, endlessly, endlessly
at the circle of leaving trolleys, an aging grandson.

End them now, to hell with those hospital sighs.
Anticipating the trolley fun of a childhood long passed,
to hear grandmother’s such wonderful laugh:
her grandson has come to spend the night!

No longer is it fun to, gracefully,
throw needles into various haystacks.
We are not wiser, we are simply cooler.
Snowflakes are light and snow is very thick.

But it’s not winter yet. An autumn rock.
The firmament is paved with cobblestones.
An ancient Inca on his furry llama
flies past, not noticing a thing that’s wrong.

The streetlights flicker by, colors of leaves.
All that’s alive is begging to go home
Dive into hay, and strongly pierce yourself
with the dull needle of your memories.

There, weeping, I reach for the arms of mommy.
But, myriad mountains. Road made out of stones.
I am an ancient Inca on a furry llama.
I’ve lives and lives to live before I reach your home.

A memory: My daughter was playing
in her vivid child paradise hue
with a doll whose name was Alla,
with a doll whose name was Sue.
How I long to return to the odors
of that summer, to rumple the grass.
To go blind to the diets and pills,
to sleep a wakeless night once again.

…The cicadas shake their tambourines
inside of my half-asleep nights.
And slowly, the stones fall in landslides
in the mountains, my kidneys, and mind.
Such a simple thing: she has grown up now.
But now I can barely grasp too
that doll whose name was Alla
and even the other, named Sue.