White Nights In St. Petersburg Poem by Lorcan Black

I.

How many White Nights have you trawled
the banks of the Neva, electrified as a nervous wire
and white as sheet,

fingers twitching in coat pockets, eyes like hooks,
looking for someone to love?





II.

Your cigarettes burn like matchsticks,
while the same stranger passes your bench three times.

The nerves burn themselves to cinders,
the ash of the cigarette flakes and drops.

He circles the bench, then speaks.
Your voice dies in your throat,
but not before words dry and mindless rasp a response.

A group of men pass by,
aggression settling in their arms, their fists.
Words ring with the force of explosions.

Startled, he moves away.

You can almost sense the shame
and locate it somewhere-

There-

in the movement of his hips,
as he goes.





III.

Ice has coalesced in the river,
whole sheets float over the surface, cold and virginal.

They said they'd be back for him, your neighbour.

The thrill of a cruise meets its final culmination:
a shower of gold, a show of blood.
Ritual humiliation, granted one by one.

You block your ears from hearing the dull thumps
drumming a bass line to the slow, eerie
silence of resignation.

They drag him like out like a sack-
(Too much drink, pissed himself) -
and the neighbours' doors slam shut,
blank mouthed, blind eyed and ignorant.

Once the sun rises and blanches the sky
they will find him- your neighbour-
face down in the ice of the Neva.

Already you know what the obituary will be-
‘Deceased found slain, home showed no sign of forced entry.'

They will call it a robbery.
And it is true, he was robbed.






IV.

The bridge opens and shuts its jaws.
Strangers pass and disperse, while a man loiters.

Fidgeting, anxiously
commenting on the weather, eyeing the passersby.

Do you wanna to go somewhere?

The moon rises over the banks of the Neva,
the ice floats saint-like over its cold floes to the Gulf.
The city basks in another white night.

The bridge opens and shuts its jaws.
Shame unfurls and locates itself somewhere-

There-

in the movement of your hips,
as you go.