Voice and candle(in memory of my mother)
1 On your knees
Easy enough to start feeling your presence —isn't that why I'm here, eyes raisedto this intricate sky? Though you neverfelt fully at home in cathedrals, if freeto plug in to spirit —finding the speckled marble floorsa touch too cold, a touch too remote,despite the lavish flowers, their promiseof fragrant heaven.
I doubt if any Renaissance domecould have placed a cap on your devotion —you on your knees in your own quiet space,whispered words bouncing off high ceilingsand scrambled like radio code;or in the clear acoustics of your tser'kov,the human scale of a small Russian church,incense raising the women's voicesas if they were angels' breath.
As you yourself are still breathed into life,your voice ready to play in my ears, your faceanchored inside my computer, alivein black and white.Like this photograph I revisit — youunder a pomegranate tree, old before your time,the love in your eyes reaching acrossunimaginable space.Voices, incense, lights. Only loveleaving a trace.
2 The sound of God
Like a bell-ringer deaf to everythingexcept the sound of his bells, you blocked outthe clamour of any religion that tried to shoutin your ears, on the grounds it mightdrown out your God.Before you were twenty you'd turned your backon the bells of Kiev's Cathedral, never sawits gold again, except behind your eyes.Then blinked it away for good.
When ideology smashed the cathedrals,turned icons into rubble, congregationinto crime — religion fell down in a heap,or seemed to, on certain days.Most people believed they knew better:countless lips kept doggedly whisperingthe fine-print headlines of saints.If the State was a rock, religion flowed round it,a stream fed from underground;people sang in their sleep, under snow,while the State blocked its ears to the sound.
Outposts of Russia sprang up in Berlin,flourished in Paris, in Rome —small congregations never in doubtthat their voices had never left home;emigrants floating free in Europe,anchoring homeland to sound.
In the end it comes down to silenceand a stillness still more profound.
3 Ashes and dust
Flames light every religion — fire as purification,annihilation of sin. The Orthodox, too,respect conflagration, but optto be planted in earth. So they can grow backinto their bodies. So they can stand upat birth.
In the end you turned away from cathedrals,preferring an underground chapel, long gone,in a busy city street — a havenfrom traffic's hell. A Catholic franchise, but to youreligion was not about borders; their incenseworked equally well. No luxurious flowers,just a cellar with candles —coins