Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.

A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. "Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me.

Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter.

This cruel age has deflected me, like a river from this course. Strayed from its familiar shores, my changeling life has flowed into a sister channel. How many spectacles I've missed: the curtain rising without me, and falling too. How many friends I never had the chance to meet.

I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.

As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.