I look at her profile and see the place where one must walk, in despair
—maybe only in despair—after those savage boundaries are drawn and
bloodlines diverge, forced to run on each side of arbitrary meridians, one
of them inevitably feeding into an enclosed terminus to fester, to be
confined like the backwater it isn’t, the other free to gully the grey mud
and run where it pleases, but running back, always back, toward the
place where its kindred tributary waits, a river made still—a besmirched
winter puddle—its surface silent but reflecting all the efforts of men to
supplant god on earth, the very ungodly, dreadfully simple weaknesses
woven into things manmade that, by their very nature, doom these
visions of godliness from the start.
I see her profile and think, She didn’t leave.
Anna Akhmatova never left.
2 Responses to “Anthony Martin. Response to the Akhmatova, The Prints Project.”