This Cruel Age Has Deflected Me.

All That I Am Hangs By A Thread Tonight

Courage: Great Russian Word, Fit For The Songs Of Our Children's Children, Pure On Their Tongues, And Free.

During The Terrible Years Of The Yekhov Terror I Spent Seventeen Months In The Prison Queues In Leningrad. One Day Someone ‘identified’ Me. Then A Woman With Lips Blue With Cold Who Was Standing Behind Me, And Of Course Had Never Heard Of My Name, Came Out Of The Numbness Which Affected Us All And Whispered In My Ear—(we All Spoke In Whispers There): ‘could You Describe This?’ I Said, ‘i Can!’ Then Something Resembling A Smile Slipped Over What Had Once Been Her Face.

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.

Give Me Bitter Years Of Sickness, Suffocation, Insomnia, Fever, Take My Child And My Lover, And My Mysterious Gift Of Song This I Pray At Your Liturgy After So Many Tormented Days, So That The Stormcloud Over Darkened Russia Might Become A Cloud Of Glorious Rays.