---

When I was a ten-year-old book worm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love. - Erica Jong

---

          *  *  *

I am in chains, I pine and languish,
And pray for death, for death alone,
And yet I still recall with anguish
Tver's barren soil and skies forlorn,

The run-down, ancient well, the snowy
Froth of the clouds high overhead,
The creaking gate that opens slowly,
The  sadness and the smell of bread,

And  those pale reaches that the roving
Wind, hushed  and weak of voice, invades,
And too the glances disapproving
Of suntanned, placid wives and maids.

1913