For Aimée

O Aimée
with your short red hair
and that worried look in your eyes
that haunts me in my hours
of gloom and solitude,

O Aimée
standing by the window
listening to the rain
the rain of the city
the humdrum rain of the hurried crowd
hurrying to get everywhere and
nowhere
stepping into the muddy puddles
of their little lives,

No, darling, you are much more than that
much more than these lines of
writing can show
maybe something like spring
or a fresh pile of hay in mid-summer
or maybe a bed of violets and daffodils
who knows what pastures your eyes can lead to?
or maybe you are just a tropical orchid
finding yourself in the wrong flower pot—
what does it matter, darling?

The wind is blowing and the rain is pouring
harder
and all the pages of my manuscript
will get wet and die away like a fragile plant
without water,

I’m just a little fish in this ocean
of computerized, electronic, space-age
psychopathic ward
and what use are my kisses if they only
kiss the air?
and I have yet to see a mermaid and a unicorn,

Darling, I’m lost in my Sputnik-NASA spacesuit
and I know that I’d rather be Dumbo
the flying elephant
but I’m sure that would be completely
out of the question,

So what do I do? I write poetry, darling,
so that some day you will behold the sky
and see it glowing with a strange emerald light
just like in The Wizard of Oz,

But the rain will keep on pouring
and the market prices will fluctuate
and the crowds will step in the puddles
and they will have more unromantic institutions
with metal doors and brick walls and barbed wires...

But as I finish this poem, I send you
                  a kiss
in spite of the sound of the washing machine
and in spite of the Coke commercial
and in spite of that lady with big boobs, selling her body

Yes, darling, I send you a kiss just like that
on a first date
so that this thing called love
may glow forever in the dark forest
of this civilization and civilizations to come...

O darling, what a song you are if only you
would listen to the sound of your heartbeat!


  June 22, 1987
--Alexander Shaumyan