Geography Of The Brain Poem by Regina Derieva

Returning to the long summer,
the golden horizons of yore,
you gave your right name, which is
why you were not allowed across the threshold.

It was easier to traverse the horizon
easier for Apelles* to draw
a line. Only the nights remain
where ink is intoxicated on the goals.

Only rubbish remains,
that, alone of the monsters, lived here
without a shirt to its name
and never in its life having seen even a cent.

Only the wall remains, which is
twined all over with muscatel and other grapes,
not from Cyprus but from Crete,
like longing for a foreign land, hand-writing,

so it might fetch tears, curved,
like each letter and each slope.
Summer is a coal, and your mouth is charred,
like an orphan's life under the law.