This is a combination poem and recipe. I wrote it on a rainy day in June in St. Petersburg, Russia. I was sitting at a window in the Joy Cafe, feeling abundant joy. I watched stylish St. Petersberg women slog through puddles in their heels and wrote this recipe in my travel log. I thought it far too elegant to be just a recipe. I am presenting it to you as a poem.

Six prunes.
(Americans call them
dried plums these days.)
Soak in cognac overnight.
(The nights are short in summer,
so if it’s June or July,
soak them overday.)
until they are rich and dark and spongy.
Nestle in a banana-split style dish
(only smaller).
Smother with walnut halves
(Perhaps these are stirred in honey
or dipped in cognac, too…
perhaps not.
(I can not be sure
because the waitress looks
at my English-speaking face
blankly when I ask.)
Top with two spires of whipped cream,
nearly unsweetened, very stiff.
This is Nevsky’s Recipe for bliss.
Or find the Joy KaFe
just off the main drag
behind Kazan Cathedral
and order it.
Only 60 pyb.
(That means roubles which is the same as
two bucks to some of us.)