A recent visit to majestic Saint Petersburg was the catalyst for this rumination.

 

Arc of Silence

Please hold my hand

Until you're completely sure

That you understand; I am

Not as I was (quoting Hitchen

As his death drew near).

 

Please hear my pleas, comprehension

Being the triumph of years

Expended or forlorn. Draw

Down the blinds that obscure

A countenance as dim as any false dawn.

 

And don't speculate, I implore,

Concerning what is lost,

For the mirror lavishes attention on

What remains: a steady frame

Replete with remembrance

Of Youth's sagacity and foolishness.

 

Saint Petersburg, O Saint Petersburg!

Centuries of shining pretensions full of

Fine powers that dance in arcadian palaces

Like old Versailles. OK, nosegays needed,

And not only for the great unwashed.

 

For we hold each other as wayward mountaineers,

Tethered and trapped on peaks of ignorance

While those with open hearts will merely say:

“Gladly they went upon their perilous way”.

 

Chris Hubbard 2020.