Trans-Siberian

Trans-Siberian Express,
Uniting East and West,
Celebrating distance
With the liturgy of time!

Trans-Siberian Express,
Buryat shaman’s breath,
Full of sunlight and snow
And millions of lives!

In life there is so very little
I truly cherish,
Truly love…
But I,
For all my faults-
Dare I say it?-
Am not a bad man.

Trans-Siberian,
Trans-Siberian Express,
From Moscow to Vladivostok,
From this world to the next!

I suffer the same perplexities
As many a man before
Yet stand before the mirror
A would-be pioneer…

The train speeds on,
Heart’s seismograph,
Church organ of solitudes,
On and on,
Singing the distances,
Sucked into the black hole
Of vanishing point…

Life,
the perilous adventure,
the quest without end!

From the grand adventures
Of so many great minds
Came chaos…

Hour after hour,
Lying on the bunk,
Far, far, very far,
Alone with time,
Part of time,
On the map and off the map,
Imperceptibly changing…

Eleven time zones,
Eleven clocks in the head,
Embraces,
kisses,
Hello and goodbye,
Shudder of movement,
Pulling away,
Away…

Milestones,
Milestones,
They flash by in a blur…
Pulled into the gravitational field
Of Siberia,
Into the orbits
Of lonely thoughts,
Into the mysteries
Of thirty nationalities…

Pharaonic mummies
of the Tagar dead
buried with their horses
lightning skeletons

Clay death masks
of the Tashtyks
griffin-eyed faces
of demons

Remember the future
stellar vortex of past lives
into which you plunge
swirling
boiling

Land of the knout
and the stake
exiles mining
the salt of despair
under Aztec suns
and skull moons

Men
good and bad
built this railway
with nothing but shovels
prisoners of the line
pouring their blood
into the iron

The samovar is bubbling
athanor of the soul
fired with blue flames
from the deep earth’s caverns
and the wolfish tang of tea
enchants
like a fairytale

Blood rituals
of Yekaterinburg
sainted bones
of the unsaintly
and Anastasia’s dog
flung howling
down the mine

Irkutsk-
Golden Horde of young beauties,
Ballerinas of the streets,
Electric with style,
Innate aesthetics….

I remember the words
Of Vladimir Rasputin,
Who said:
“I need a bottle of a vodka
and a young girl
every day
or I cannot create.”


Baikal shore-
On a sandy beach
Childen sport
And a brown muscleman
Works out on parallel bars
While his fabulous girlfriend
Behind sunglasses
Stretches out her dancer’s body
In bright bikini
To the pulsating sun
And waterskiers rise up
On mighty arcs of spray

And the far horizon
Floats in the air above the lake
Ghosts whisper in the sand

From a prehistoric hunter’s hand
a Rubenesque Venus
carved in mammoth tusk

Oldest deepest purest Baikal:
each time one enters its waters
adds a year to life-
ah,no creature here more bizarre
than you!

On the empty beach lies the skeleton
Of a seal
Beautiful as a Calatrava bridge.

Are these the shores of Heaven?
The waters of Eden?
Summer and winter
absorb you into the absolute.
Vertiginous lucidity
fathoms the forever
eerie waves of light
sweeping over you


Out there
If you lose your way
In winter
And fall asleep
You will be turned into an ice statue
Till you reappear again
With the snowdrops
In spring…

Here I am on my bunk
Like a Carmelite
Keeping total silence
And sleeping in her own coffin

The distances teach you
To trust no-one and fear all;
Violence will be done today
Injustice will once more win;

Our glorious rulers have their snouts
In the trough;
Thieves prosper,
the honest will be forever poor.

The tsar ensures that misery
Is equal for all;
Praise him and be grateful
For his heavy fist.

Russia,
Land of martyrs,
Bearing witness-
Now the kairos,
Easter in the soul…

Than the force of gentleness
There is no greater power on earth,
And no-one is more powerful than the compassionate.

What terrors of surrender
Await you in your exploits unto God?

It is the hour of Boris and Gleb;
Their brother comes to kill them,
To take the throne of Russia for himself,
And they refuse to fight,
And are slaughtered,
Bend their heads to his sword,
Sacrificing themselves
To avert war.

O, brothers, brothers,
Love one another,
As you love your forefathers’ land…

Khan of dreams,
I walk through golden snows,
Friend to wolf and raven;
I am the frog
That dwells in three elements,
The bear with the voice of a man.

This is my life
Of magic and science,
In a land created in men’s minds.