Four Cities
Mike RavdonikasI spent the past fifteen years looking for stability – and ended up finding it in a castle built on sand, of all places. Yet, given the state the world is in today, I can no longer afford the luxury of pretending to be homeless.
Three lost, one found
/ Spirit of St. Petersburg /
A drop of fish
Dissolved in water
So completely
That there's no smell,
Except in Spring
When shoals
Of silver cucumbers
Alight on these
Unsealike shores:
Freshwater seaport,
Where the rain
And the canals
Are full of memory
Of ancient marshes –
Ducks and ticks,
The rustle of a wayward bear,
The trembling spears
Of pale-eyed Finnish locals,
The passing of a mail-clad host,
Unlikely to return.
A dune of mosses,
Fixed in place
By palaces of stone,
Perpetually musty basements,
Glittering facades.
And quiet courtyards:
Gazing up,
You see yourself
Embraced by yellow walls
And open windows,
In the heart of summer.
It's 4 AM,
The sun returns
After a brief retreat,
The square of sky
Is blue again,
The bottom of the well –
A refuge for what
Liquid June night
Still remains...
I carry in my dreams,
Forever.
/ Spirit of Toronto /
A city of so many streams
Paved over
By the advancing
Feet of progress,
Proud woodsmen
Set aside by prouder
Refugees,
A babel in the making –
Never have I seen
So many colors
Of humanity's
Surprising skin than
On the Younge-Spadina
Subway, packed into a car.
Synthetic velvet seats
So red and beckoning,
Just like the streets
Of red-brick duplex houses:
Their trees and bushes,
Their raccoons,
Defiant, staring back.
And then, the partygoers,
Fashion lovers.
Barefoot ladies,
Their high-heel shoes in hand,
They march along
The frozen pavements
Like some goddesses of hunt,
Descending on a burger,
To celebrate the night's
Eventual demise
And toast a stark
New winter morning
With a coke.
The city smiles.
The Humber and the Don
Flow to the windy lake.
The sacrifice was worth it.
/ Spirit of Kiev /
The city takes a break,
Right in the middle,
For a river,
Full of peaceful islands,
Where you can rent a boat
And move along an endless afternoon,
While both its banks
Are filled with distant bustling.
Khreshchatyk closed for traffic
(For the weekend,
And not with iron barbs,
And not against the tanks).
The golden sun,
On golden churches
And those chestnuts –
So tall, so full of candles
That you'll never call
Another tree a "chestnut"
Anywhere again.
/ Spirit of Dubai /
An unwilling slow
Camel of sand,
Buried deep underground,
Flat and featureless,
Fluffy like baby fur,
Cold as the night,
Dry – of such powerful
Dryness no sprinkler
Can ever defeat,
Dry like the powdered bones
Of old people
In a bag on the belt
Of a mountain climber –
Take one pinch,
And your fingers are gone,
Desiccated forever.
One day he will stand up,
And shake us all off
And move further inland,
Step after giant step,
Entombing these shallow
Parks, trees and flowers –
And all of the lipsticks
And cigarette lighters
Of concrete and glass
That we build on his skin –
In a sand pit,
To be munched shut
By water, wave after wave
From the sea we came out of
So long, long ago –
But shouldn't have bothered
(as far as he is concerned).
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