A Memory

21 May 2021

I have been thinking about the Russian animator, Yuri Norshteyn, having just watched a film about his work on ‘The Overcoat‘ (from Gogol’s story), which he started 40 years ago and has not yet finished. This in turn reminded me of his film, ‘Hedgehog in the Fog‘ (Ёжик в тумане). I wrote a post a long time ago which I called ‘Horse in the Fog‘, recalling an experience I had in Russia in 2002, the memory of which keeps coming back to me. I felt moved to write about it when set an exercise in a creative writing class recently.  The exercise was to write a sestina – ‘a complex verse form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoy. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different and particular order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas; the closing envoy contains all six words.’ It sounds off-putting but I found it pleasantly challenging to write within such a rigid structure. I have never included any fiction or poetry in my blog before and I probably won’t do it again. That’s not really what this blog is for…

I think I may also be in this reflective frame of mind because I have been reading ‘In Memory of Memory‘, by the poet Maria Stepanova. It is so thought-provoking, particularly about the unreliabilty of memory and the part that photographs and objects play in what we think we remember and understand about the past – our own and that of lost friends and family.

Sestina – ‘Through a Glass, Darkly’

A memory from long ago – a horse

Within the convent walls, set loose to graze;

An otherworldly sight – through frosted glass

It seemed, as all about was swathed in mist.

Our senses told us though – not mist but smoke –

A fire somewhere – and yet we felt at peace.

 

The day before, loud bees dispersed the peace,

The flowers blazed, no sign then of a horse;

The wafting from the church of fragrant smoke,

Within, the calming shades of whites and greys,

The plastered walls as cool as lingering mist,

A glimpse of heaven as through a looking glass.

 

A simple room, a knotted rug, a glass

Of tea, a sweet-pine-scented space of peace,

Somehow a coming home and nothing missed.

No premonition of a spectral horse.

The daylight faded into pinks, then greys.

And while we slept, the earth began to smoke.

 

The peat beneath the surface exhales smoke,

Remorselessly the sun beats down on glass

In stifled cities, on the blistered greys

Of molten tarmac; no-one can find peace

As loved-ones gasp and choke, and all are hoarse

With breathing evil air, a poisoned mist.

 

And back at home, the story was not missed.

The news showed Russia in the grip of smoke,

Apocalyptic heat a stalking horse,

Trampling the weak and shattering lungs like glass.

Yet in an ancient town we breathed in peace;

Within the convent walls, their whites and greys.

 

The day we woke to find the world all greys

We wandered through the garden wrapped in mist;

Blooms without hue – grey roses and sweet peas;

A mystery to us the smell of smoke.

No sound, the sky like pearl or milky glass.

And there before us loomed a grazing horse.

 

An image pieced in soft and dusky greys,

I see the horse, but also you – much missed –

Conjured as if through smoke or darkened glass.

 

For Audrey