We are keeping an eye on the girls, so that the kvass

doesn’t go sour in the jug, or the pancakes cold,

counting over the rings, and pouring Anis

into the long bottles with their narrow throats

straightening tow thread for the peasant woman:

ceremoniously, the house is filled with the smoke of

incense—and we are sailing over Cathedral square

arm in arm with our godfather, silks thundering.

The wet nurse has a screeching cockerel

in her apron—her clothes are like the night.

She announces in an ancient whisper that

the young man—in the chapel—is dead.

And an incense cloud wraps our coals about

under its own saddened chasuble.

The apple trees are white, like angels—and

the pigeons on them—grey—like incense itself.

And the pilgrim woman sipping kvass from the ladle

at the edge of the couch, is telling

to the very end a tale about Razin

and his most beautiful Persian girl.