TOLSTOY AT YASNAYA-POLYANA

Who in times past
an aristocrat
strolled by pines
drank like the swallows
scourged from passion's
once grey Gogol overcoat
turns out to be weeping
on a Fall's dance
of the hours
over bare-iced sheets.

He walks this night alone
by breakwater's embankment
through a mute September
yet knowing his fevered ways
where black bread
is only a genuflection
of a hunger much deeper
than his own peace.

Over a lake landscape
the birdsong's communion
of a child's awareness
pervades him
here in these woodlands
the dreadful cold blazes
under a full moon
of Autumn's fretfulness
with a deep seclusion
only a Count may hide.