for Olga

grasses shoot through hands, airplanes into shoulder blades,
a host of hosts

we sit, the two of us
encircled

by gravestones like the crossed arms
of austere monks
under a cowl of sky –
the Bernardines

duchess, is it far to Petushki?
beyond the river, down Polotsk Street
by Saint Anne’s lurking Gothic skeletons
and all those saints

only that!
or a few burning shots
somewhere, a bonfire,
in brackets –
our histories
slink by
like a snail on a leaf
leaving a trail of ooze
a river

the snail a paintbrush
the snail a pen
slowly, slowly –
word by word, stroke by stroke,
the windfall fruit, the melting wax of chestnut trees –
the chronicles of Vilnius, advances, retreats,
lay out our history’s trail of ooze