Toska
Crinkled oak leaves won’t leave their trees,
and as I dawdle at the window,
watching them just stay there being brown
and cringed up in desiccated death,
I’m musing on those Russians whipped out
in serfish pokornost who chugalug
sweet, hot vodka and then just stand there
mouths agape at the moon, feeling
blessed peace for one single instant before
falling face forward into kneedeep mud.
Their souls welter deeper than our souls--
all their writers say so. No other words
but theirs can say the blues they feel
lying on hard stoves in their own night soil.
No wind today, but if there was any wind
it could only jiggle the stiff oak leaves
that will finally fall to scrape in fitful lurches
across crusted snow. All for the best,
since I’ve lost the will to rake. I just stand,
as vacant as Old Dan Tucker, looking
at leaves doing nothing, a superfluous man.
Haven’t their great writers, who’ve written
fervidly of the untranslatable suffering
of their holy peasants, also written
of this tawdry emptiness in the kulaks
of America who lack the joy of grief?
and as I dawdle at the window,
watching them just stay there being brown
and cringed up in desiccated death,
I’m musing on those Russians whipped out
in serfish pokornost who chugalug
sweet, hot vodka and then just stand there
mouths agape at the moon, feeling
blessed peace for one single instant before
falling face forward into kneedeep mud.
Their souls welter deeper than our souls--
all their writers say so. No other words
but theirs can say the blues they feel
lying on hard stoves in their own night soil.
No wind today, but if there was any wind
it could only jiggle the stiff oak leaves
that will finally fall to scrape in fitful lurches
across crusted snow. All for the best,
since I’ve lost the will to rake. I just stand,
as vacant as Old Dan Tucker, looking
at leaves doing nothing, a superfluous man.
Haven’t their great writers, who’ve written
fervidly of the untranslatable suffering
of their holy peasants, also written
of this tawdry emptiness in the kulaks
of America who lack the joy of grief?
