I wish I could sit with you Father Time, Mother Eternity. Maybe we’d drink tea from tall glasses as I did when a boy in Finland–Russian tea, the candles shining through.
Damask and silver, twilight. Together reflecting on the small, beautiful, ineluctable joy of seeing animals, their eyes.
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The dictator has broken all the gramophone records but one. He plays it for his dinner guests: wolves howling. When the record is over he starts it again. Stalin as disc jockey…
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Father Time, Mother Eternity, how do I shake these blues?
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My friend, the poet Jim Crenner wrote: “Life is like a game of chess. Death is like two games of chess.”
Once, playing with a friend in a Greek taverna, a spider walked across the board and we both decided it was a draw.
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I wonder if Stalin ever played his record backwards?
Planet of the Blind 