At the
Moscow
Circus
the dancing bears
catch rings with their paws.
Like a sluggish man
this one sways, seems at a loss
as rings cascade
through the air and form
a rippling sheath
along his arm.
The illusion comes and
goes and I don't deny
I almost see them as ‘real’—all of them, the
bear
inside the man inside
the bear. Where
does it end? Tigers melt through their hoops. Horses
like these have outrun
wolves, pulled troikas
through the hardest
cold and yes, the well-arched neck’s
a sign of excellent
training, but that cossack
dangling alongside the
galloping hooves, is
he master of the beast
or just drunk with wildness
for some lost
Ninotchka?
Surely the rider has
his sorrows—but so did my Turkish
friend, on her way
from
Istanbul
to
New York
,
who, without a word of
Russian (and tanked on vodka,
misery and love) found
a driver to find the grave
where her exiled
countryman Hikmet lay.
As if all it took to
get her there was the name—
Hikmet—a name like a
talisman, an arrow
through those dark
confusing streets,
leading her at last to
the one man in all of
Moscow
who would take her
there, where she could weep
for her poet and laugh
and wail, pounding the ground
till well past
midnight before the plane carried her on.
Oh comrades, think of
internationalism at its best—one
human heart in time
with another, one clown
masking his sorrow,
one dazed terpsichorean
bear, or poet. The spangles are nothing.
Artistry is dangerous,
with or without a net. Clutching
our popcorn, flashing
light-swords into the dark,
we stare
transfixed. The tightrope walker
in his burlap hood
could be death himself crossing that wire,
balancing his pole,
each foot gripping steadily forward,
the human shape within
the bag stretching blindly,
inching along, making
it look so easy,
coming toward us,
whether or not we know.
– first published in The MacGuffin, New Decades, New Writers Special Issue, 1990
recipient of the issue’s Best Poem Honorarium. |
