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JUDY HOGAN
BEAVER SOUL 21 (For Mikhail)
August 7, 1992, Sharya
“The Russian fields are the most beautiful
I have seen,” I say to your friends when
I make my toast. To you I say it
again. They change me, these fields of Russia.
It was you who taught me to love
them, and you who bring me to see them
in all their naked loveliness, here in Sharya.
I sit at the desk where you wrote the
novel into which you put everything you
knew then about the human soul, and,
as you wrote, your hair turned grey.
We
traverse these distances like snow geese.
“God helps us,” you tell me. I believe you.
“You brought the rain,” you say.
“It means good luck. They are happy
you are here because you brought the
rain.” They toast me again and again.
They sing to me, their faces full of
tenderness and longing, old Russian
songs. They want to make me happy,
these friends of yours. We feast and
drink fruit wine; they sing and drink.
I tell them what I feel in Russian. They
understand my new language, and sing
some more. They want me to love their
Russia, their mother. I already do.
I already feel that their Russia is my Russia.
Your fields, lying peacefully in the late
afternoon by a lake where water lilies float
like swans in the shallows, and cattails stand
solemnly, like the herons when they're
fishing and waiting, are already my fields.
This beauty you cherish is mine because
you led me deeper into it, showed me the
real meaning of a birch, how, in centuries
past but not forgotten, the birch was
mother to the peasants, giving them warmth,
isbas, cooking utensils, tools. How
they worshiped her, this mother, and, when
they wanted to speak to the spirits
above, they put their arms around her, rested
against her breast, put their cheeks to her
bark, and prayed.
Vera says that
everyone needs a tree of her own.
Hers is an oak. From this oak she draws
strength when she's weary in spirit;
exhausted from her labors to take care
of the land and the people she loves. She
has her driver take us along the road she had
built. We drive many miles past forests
of birch, pine, and fir. I wonder where
we are going. Then the car stops. We get out.
She wanted us to see her land, to stand
where she stands when her soul needs
to see farther, better, deeper. I take this
view she loves into my soul. Let it
help me later when I am thousands of
miles away. Let me remember these
fields, stretching to their borders of forest,
resting like peaceful children in a
sleep only the gods know how to give.
And Tatyana tells me how
she fell in love with two priests. It was
their eyes. Their eyes were like lakes.
The more she looked, the more deeply
she saw into those clear waters.
She is laughing, like I do, at myself.
I feel her young and playful soul.
Love makes us both foolish. We laugh.
And this Mayor of Sharya, who
keeps filling my glass and telling me
stories as if I knew all the Russian words
in the dictionary. I turn to my interpreter.
Katya can't imagine how to translate
what he's saying. I tell her again and
again not to worry. She worries. He
puts his hand on my arm and tells
me something else, affectionately. He is
expansive and happy. The American
likes him, his wine, his liqueur, his food,
his friends, his Russia. I read his
heart without the help of dictionary
or interpreter.
Katya, meantime, on my left,
wants to tell me about the lost churches
of Soligalich. She has a book
she wants to give me. An Englishman
photographed them not long before
the Revolution. After the Revolution
they were destroyed. They were very
beautiful. She's still grieving.
I say that I've already seen many beautiful
Russian churches. They and the isbas are my
favorite architecture. “They are being restored
now. Not all were lost.”
“But these churches
in Soligalich,” she says, “they can't be restored.”
She worries about Russia, too, its people,
their souls. She reads philosophy
to understand Russia. Is there a
distinct Russian culture, she wonders.
I tell her yes. I am learning it.
It reaches me here like these soft fields,
which lie like children against the breasts
of their mother. It's in the shining
eyes, the generous spirits of these people.
“We help each other,” says Vera. “It's
how we survive.”
Then there are the birches,
their strength slender, but generously
present. They are everywhere. They give
all they have. They are Russia, but, more
than the birches, these people, singing
what their souls have learned about
how suffering is not where it ends;
there's a place beyond pain, though painful;
a place of joy, yet never absolute;
a place where all the notes may blend;
where grief is present but does not
destroy music or joy or the resilient human soul.
Copyright 2006, all rights revert to the poet. |
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ABOUT POET JUDY HOGAN
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