IN OUR SMALL CIRCLE

We played a trio and quartets
every weekend in adolescence
with Mozart and Beethoven
in our own obedience of notes
of brisk con brio
then with a slower movement
interwoven in our parts
as our own advertisement
of getting a musical share
in the remnants of our risk and hope
with a memory of being taught
knowing our musical history
as sought to be lyrically aware
from an older world of Europe's
lyrically aware as we played
under a nightshade shed
by the hot oak trees
near the cold river bed
then we spoke in poetry
of Keats, Yeats,
Eliot and Pound's words
or we were said to be renorn
by the innocent bird sounds
which we heard by morn
we learn of nature's
rheumatic and romantic notes
from the magic lantern
of innumerable meteors
recollecting our fiery quotes
yearning to be a composer
discerning in our own rights to jazz
sub rosa under the sharp and flat bars
as playing our new sax riffs
under the flowering lights
a wind stirs over green grass
as we drink tea from a samovar
reaching from our tall glass
staring at the full moon and stars
transfixed under the breeze
having a mixture of salad
with vanilla
and Russian kvass
thinking of those few nights
visiting at Akhmatova's dacha
we are the devotion for nature,
it seems in these night hours
that only our unspoken dreams
will pass  pardon and shimmer
from unbroken memory
in our culture
as the garden flowers.