Svizzera Poem by Anna Polibina-Polansky

It's a country teaching me tongues. I spoke German in a week, and Roman, in two weeks. It's a country of contrasts, between rich and yet the richer. I found out, all by my inner impulses, that the local Bahghof (a railway station) had once been a place of up planned meeting Lev Glebovich with Mashen'ka, at the novel by Nabokov. I was not even prompted by it. The Lake of Geneve had been a place tenderly cherished by Nabokov, so he had preferred to narrow the circle of locations, for his characters, up to Berlin and Basel. Nice of him, I can't add nothing to his sneaky step, he could have foreseen everything. We learned straight away what local 'samedi soir' was about. My quite aged parents rushed to learn the repertory of all accessible night clubs, 'notturni', in Italian. We caught up with the time when local trams had stopped riding, and our luxurious street was all serene and illuminated, keeping traces of the epoch when Napoleo had been abiding here. At this exact spot (Fribourg rather than Basel) Tsvetaeva learned the cult of Napoleo and brought it back to Moscow. I wonder if she liked local German ladies; most probably not. The first more or less attractive faces, at my viewing, arrived here from Paris, but they were so arrogant and putting on airs, that I couldn't stand even brief dialogues with them (though in French) . The best lady of them compared me to Maupassant while at a party in a castle in Schwartzwald, and later took full revenge at my necessity to accompany a boy 9 years elder than myself. I wonder if she still laughs aloud while recalling that real funny story. My sojourning there kept a print of prior stories that had taken a place then long before us and we yet pulsing in the local air. It all was luxuriously accompanying by trying up local beer, pizzas, cheeses, kinds of chocolate, and by trying up onto oneself, watches, clutches, expensive umbrellas, and so. It was a spell of life when we were compelled to choose between 'Muller' and 'Manor', 'Rolex' and 'Bucherer'. Visiting Jungian chair, having a lunch at 'Trois Roys', at the table where Napoleo once sat, and then watching regatas over the Rhein and afterwards, hanging out at an unearthly exposition, all within one day, seemed easy to embody. The Alpian fairy tale lingered everywhere around, and the scale of realias was so unbelievable, that you needed piching yourself at a sleeve. That is how people giving up the religion of trite love, acquire the world of treasures instead, I concluded then.2011-2021 (Basel - Berne - Moscow) .