Scenes from the Petrine city

We touched down amid ghostly drifts
that loomed through midnight indigo -
the grounded fleet of Aeroflot
snowblind, gloomy albatross,
camouflaged on tarmac turned to tundra
by the Arctic frost.

The Neva's glacial facade,
waist-deep mounds in city parks,
paralysed canals and leaden skies
muffled the sounds of life,
so that it seemed a spellbound realm,
held in thrall until the thaw,
suspended in an icy trance
where birds were silenced,
no-one danced.

Behind locked doors, old palaces
hid chandeliers like frozen tears.
Pushkin stood aloof as bronze,
Modest Mussorgsky slumbered on
where tombs lay dormant until spring,
when buds are conjured by the sun.

We looked out from our velvet suite
upon the Nevsky's frigid stream,
lit by street-lamps and the moon,
haunted by the Petrine dream.

*

When our plane took off,
larch trees and birches
fledged with tender green
rose on tiptoe,
delicate as feathers
brushing morning sky.

Below, in place of melting snow,
we glimpsed thickets of light, new growth,
old cupolas and spires aglow,
water given leave to flow...
 

*
March 1978