By the Snowdrifts

As if rising from the depth
of a three-day blizzard,
here on a spaceport
somewhere in the Caucasus,
where satellites are launched
I’m trembling in my overcoat
feeling like Gogol
with his unreality in his notes.

In the space of this dream
here in the mountains
on a lonely cosmodome
near the rocket launchers,
I find myself on a slick highway,
not knowing my destiny or the time
as spacecraft rise on limitless ranges,
millions of stars taking off
into the black strip of a night sky.

I’m abandoned on barren Russian hills
nibbling on the Alexander torts
Nana Sophia baked for me back home,
listening to a sci-fi record
of the Helicopter Quartet
by the composer Stockhausen
here on an electronic field,
wishing to pilot a craft.

I awake in an orbit to the planets,
to the atonal music of outer space.