You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I'd plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, or that I'd ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you.

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

We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and our former riches.

This Cruel Age has deflected me.

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

It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

The word dropped like a stone on my still living breast. Confess: I was prepared, am somehow ready for the test.