Небо — как колокол, / Месяц — язык . . .
The sky is like a bell, / and the moon, its tongue . . .
— Sergei Esenin, “The Dove of Jordan”

When I was born, the moon was new.

Imagine—the black hairs of that empty
sky in silence, unmoved
as angels hide the spotted body
under wings of purest white, wash
in red tears what priests refuse
to swaddle in scarlet wool, hush
what the Lord might repent of having made.

In this way I was cast—brittle
flesh around a core of stifled
cry, like fire shut up
in tongueless brass.

The bells of Uglich
are fallen, and the earth is hushed. The bells
of Danilov are sent away, and the sky
is empty. Stalin stands again
upon his stolen pedestal.

To my mother, I am become a crime.

In a land that will never be
my mother, I am ill-tempered. A Russian
bell is not turned on a lathe,
not tuned to play in a carillon;
it is not a note or a chord but a voice
respected for itself while disclosing
something more—an audible icon.

In his History of Bells and the Art
of Bell Casting, Olovyanishnikov
recommends a core of mud, flax,
manure, horsehair, and straw.
I, like any woman, am made
of nothing grander. A man is made
from the same. And still, on the banks
of the Anadyr, beneath the willows
of the Kuskokwim, I might have sung
and been something a priest would bless.

The Mississippi flows on
through a strange land, moonless sky,
silence stacked on itself like a cedar
pyre.

Tongueless, I pray for the stifled
cry to ascend like a column and lead me
home—to press a coal to my lips.