Four Poems

The Icon Room

           Oh, the cuckoos in the birchwood, the cook beaming
across beets and aubergine preserves, for it seems that I am
           as well-preserved as the apricots floating in fruit juice,
orange peel steaming with hibiscus, and the pot so hot that she asks
           Nikita to lift it to the table near the shelf where the icons sit.

           Fog seems to be lifting as I recognise parcels of sound:
she arrived and he departed, compote and teapot. Oh, the smiling women
           at the Tretyakov Museum when I ask if we can come and go
between the café and the icon room! Yet as fog lifts, something
           will be lost: the mystery of the irregular plural for hedgehog.



The Mystery of the Banya

Is it these girls in the banya, all steam and wrapped in towels,
           the tray of sweets, the scrubbing down and plastic bowls
on the tiles, the rush to cool and smother ourselves in snow?

I think it’s more than this: it’s wanting the imprint of Russian
...