At the Rebirth of St. Petersburg
Conquest, Robert
At the Rebirth of St. Petersburg White nights of the northern city, Blue eyes of one of its women. Light brims up over the Pole, limning With surfaces of serenity Gold spires, green squares, grey...
...But now the white night is cool, The eyes upon mine are calm...
...Sheets of light under the swansdown Sky sweep through, around, over, Unsilting every dulled sense, Flexing every frozen mood Of the stranger from a lower latitude...
...Profound plenitude, then: Not the thin blue of the shallows, Of the village-girl gaze that goes With blonde plaits...
...Peeling from lulled waters, sky-silence, How can such fineness run so rich...
...Terror-hammer, falsehood-furnace Crushed the selfish, or just weak, to mere Clinker, to twisted scrap...
...Laminations of light, ermine, almond, Dissolved into the wholly transparent: A fluid purity to leach Out the crass, the quotidian, Mind blanched to take stronger hues And above all her eyes...
...That blue's Even more confirmatory than All those wide-winged whitenesses: With an unstinting radiance Of acceptance, of endurance Inexhaustible as the rich skies...
...And yet the inhuman has firmed The depth and strength of that blue: Here life's been indentured to Troll, golem, the undead, the damned, Mean fury has raved, ravenous, Down these streets, with claws of torture, War, famine, lies, slaughter...
...Robert Conquest...
...nor like the alien Flat amethyst ovals of sprites with Snake-fascinations, snake-fears In the cold springs, white-birch-hidden meres, Projected unfeeling from myth...
...but The fine, the firm, with eyes half-shut Was forged through years in that fire To a gentle strength, to a charm Against all that's false and cruel...
...Light brims up over the Pole, limning With surfaces of serenity Gold spires, green squares, grey river Where today's dusk is tomorrow's dawn...
...And that blue is the sheen of a steel It took white heats to anneal...
Vol. 24 • December 1991 • No. 12
