The day over Volga was dusky,
But our eyes could not schun
The sky, rough, ragged and husky
With its hidden sullen sun.
But suddenly torn asunder
Ventured the clouds to glide;
The lightning came without thunder
Remaining, and we inside.
Inside, in ourselves, in the Heaven,
Where we sometime have been;
The scripture of God are seven
Colours: red, orange, green
And blue, and azure, and yellow,
Violet; you violate
Your enemy, if you swallow
The sacrament, healing bait;
And so fulfills the treaty
Between God and men;
We dwell in invisible city:
The density was the den
With our soul, with the noddy,
And here in the vanished maze
Transparency is our body,
Our destiny and our space.
The transparency would be shallow
Without the scripture in view:
The colours: red, orange, yellow
And green, and azure, and blue,
Violet, unviolated,
Spectacular, spectral slide,
Awaited and unawaited:
The rainbow, and we inside.
Maybe it is only the pity
Of God, whom insult we, but
We dwell in invisible city,
In Kitezh or in Monsalvat.
It is an autumnal splendour
Of ash, of asp and of birch;
The forms are massive and slender:
The tower, the dome, the church.
If our age is the crusher,
That leads to the common grave,
We see the Rainbow Russia,
And it means that we are safe.
Maybe the tokens are risible
With our whimsical sins,
But if Russia turns invisible,
The world-cataclysm begins.
21.09.1995-21.08.1996.