I sit here in Kirov
like a bird mouthing sedge from a window-pane.
Twilight—young
night gone pale with hunger—drags
its bony fingers on the slate
roof, the clouds are writing the story
of my future comforts, and the hour
of my death, in spiked Cyrillic, a tattoo
down the spine of the sky.
The birds have woken but the trees haven’t,
yet. A bud or two, a frost-seared
crocus, the dead tulips I got you
from a florist’s, murmuring
my penitence. You sit on the couch
with your feet up, watching a woman dance
on TV, trailing her long sleeves behind her.
That spring portentuous wind
is blowing under the door.
April spills light
like a sack of sugar,
while I grow sere
and black as a cigar.