Chagallig
by Uri Rosenshine
Later that night
the moon was large and blue over the buckwheat
The cat sat beside a samovar
behind the barn window
and the field mouse stood
at the grasses’ edge
Listen, then, the train passed
behind the poplars
and the angel, the same one
I told you about before, flew
right over Vitebsk
Our bodies were tall as the barn,
we understood, we were seated, incredulous
We saw nighttime, a history of nighttime:
new odors, frankness in speech
and the distant intelligence
of shoulders
Eternity, that strange bird—
I asked her, asked her if she knew
what I meant by it,
the sky behind her face, behind the moon
spread like a great flag
I knew, then, what country
we were in, whose land
It was obvious—the dream of a city
no taller than a stalk of buckwheat—
how we would have towered over them!
The smallest materials,
beetles, ferns and funguses, several
months’ worth of the moon
lying spent on the ridge
of milk jugs emptied
in the square—
We can account for these,
numbering them, one on the other
with our hands and mouths,
in our given fashion,
untutored in the sum of things
I spelled it out on her,
along the grain, you know—
She knew what I had meant to say,
exactly what I meant to say.