photos: tony whittle
NOTES TOWARDS A POEM ON RUSSIA
1
Red star night.
A badge in the sky.
Banners at the cross roads.
Oh Mother Russia,
your past bleeding,
we are driving to the future
in a black limousine.
2
Rubbing hearts
in the lift
with travellers,
an atlas in microcosm,
all telling us,
by their accents,
the rooms
that they were born in.
In the Ukraine Hotel,
the bathrooms drip
with voices
and many tongues
sleep,
with the last words of the day
melting away on their lips.
3
Vodka is as warm
as a kiss.
It thrusts a burning finger
down your throat.
After a few,
we embrace.
Our arms surround
the World.
Warm Russian that he is,
Igor kisses me.
After fish and caviar,
the kiss
tastes good!
He signs away his writing:
To Keith,
who is both happy and sad.'
Another night
spurts into a dream.
In and out of trouble,
people will always
dance.
4
TO A FELLOW WRITER IN RUSTAVI
Last night we swopped our shirts.
They didn't fit our bodies too well
but they fitted our mood exactly.
5
WHITE NIGHTS
The huge spread of Leningrad.
Cold courtyard heart.
The winter is hard,
but the nights are turning,
from black to white,
to red and back again.
6
Circus,
and I'm dazzled;
not by the slender sway
of the supple trapezist
but by the spotlight
of a girl's blonde hair.
Shining from the audience,
she smiles
and all Russia smiles at me.
Such tricks in this moment.
I know I'll never see her again.
7
ZAGORSK
All the wailing
behind fine railings.
The seminary domes like suns
catch the sun
and priests, with long nights in their beards,
harmonize brilliantly.
Their voices,
polished gold,
sound out the walls
as a rocket
glints in the sky.
8
RUSTAVI STEELWORKS
It's hellish hot in here.
Beneath the Earth,
these are
men and women
sweating steel,
forging
futures for
their children.
Steel bars for prisons,
steel bars for playgrounds.
It's hellish hot in here.
Like a heart,
burning.
9
Three swaying silhouettes.
Three bureaucrats.
Along the street,
they joggle towards us.
In their cases,
they carry documents with drink
seeping between the lines.
And now they are laughing,
and now the words are laughing.
They are peace documents.
Messages.
Meant for bottles,
meant for oceans.
Keith Armstrong
