Sasha's dream

'There are things that I think that I try to remember there are roads that I've trod that I've tried for forever there are lips I have kissed that I've kissed for forever there are dreams I dreamt though I never thought I ever saw a smile as so sweet and as clever as the winter of the gaze beneath your pride...'

There is nothing as empty and emptying as a Siberian wasteland. The howling and gutting winds rip through your being, regardless of the sputtering spindle wood, like a sham that holds a tissue between you and the true wilderness beyond. It is a thin veneer that offers just a sheath like protection against the howling horrors of the blackest and coldest of dreadful winter nights.'

But nothing as screechingly bitter as the winter of your eyes. Or the scolding blizzards of your jealous scorns.

'IÂ remember the resonant song of the Bolshevik choir echoing around like the sound of cold hands clapping in saint Petersburg square while clouds of breath turn to ice and shatter. And the red sheet of blood drawn down like a curtain over the slaughter of protestors seeking their day in the sun. Or the sweaty slathery body heaving in the deeps of her suicidal night. And his dark digging eyes picking at her fumbling awkwardness.

The crunched people huddled around lonely spots of spitting fires, jostling with elbows and clenched fists for a free space on the filthy floor.

Yet the sweep of marigolds rippling in the meadows beneath the auspices of the sun. And the huge grand sweep of the sky only known in the gestures of the furthest of norths and souths. The low slung huts of the gulags while the dying day shrieks like a banshee at its death beneath the birth of the blooming stars'

There are speeches I remember, Churchill, To kill a Mockingbird, the Diplomat in Bosnia. They all resonate with power. And your face that burnt so brightly and briefly before that dreadful crumbling, crashing day crushed it forever save in my shuddering heart.

The days have grown longer without you, they stretch endlessly beyond like the fathomless baked Outback or the African Bush naked beneath my confused gaze from my lofty perch among the ice-spires of Kilimanjaro.

I have never fully understood that which I behold. You least of all Sasha.

Nor ever shall I now.

Farewell my friend farewell....

yechydda,