IMPROVISATION # 117
VASILY AKSYONOV'S HOUR
(1932-2009)

Woody twigs
are picked off a tree trunk
as students get drunk
after reading "Pravda"
and you Vasily Aksyonov
listen to riffs of jazz
lying half the night
by a lonely old lake
which for the dreamers
is always for you
to awaken early feeling
younger than yesterday's lovers
as a chafed song bird
races over chance clouds
of the Arctic cold sky
by the lumbering landscape
entangled and geometrically
shaped by unsafe lines
in the lingering margins
of a frozen space full of stars
as if your slammed dark poetry
was invented in dismay,
yet somewhere you realize
there are instant miracles
to be stared at or invented
in sight ready words
put out as graffiti on city walls
to recognize your verse
by candles and napkins
in long life sentences
as given out this February
to Prince Myshkin
as you suddenly remember
when the soccer ball
is gone
in sudden interference.