But really
I would prefer
to sit, drink water,
reread some Russians
a while longer
-a luxury
perhaps, but why
should I, anyone,
call it that, why
should reading
what I want,
in a well-hydrated fashion,
always be what I'm
planning to finally
do, like hiking
or biking, & now
that I think of it, reading
should make me, anyone,
breathe harder, then
easier, reach for cold,
cold water, & I
prefer my reading
that way, I prefer
Ivan Turgenev,
who makes me work for
not quite pleasure
no, some truer
sweatier thing,
Turgenev,
who is just now,
in my small room
in West Texas,
getting to the good part,
the very Russian part,
the last few pages
of "The Singers"
when the story
should be over,
Yakov the Turk
has sung with fervor,
meaning true
Russian spirit,
meaning he's won
a kind of 19th century
Idol in the village
tavern, The End, but
Turgenev goes
on, the narrator walks
out, down a hill,
into a dark
enveloping mist,
& he hears
from misty far away
some little boy
calling out for
Antropka!
calling hoarsely,
darkly,
Antropka-a-a!
& it's that voice that stops
then opens my breath
that voice
& all Monday-Wednesday-Fridays
all Tuesday-Thursdays
are gone
I have arrived
in the village of
no day none
& I am sitting
with the villagers
who are each at once
young old
who have the coldest
water to give me
& songs
I think I have sung before
they sing
their underground
tree-root syllables
they give me silences
from their long
long hair


About this poem
"'The Singers' is the only work by Turgenev that I've read. I've read and loved much more Tolstoy, Chekhov, Nabokov (and in poetry, I can't live without Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva). Honestly, 'The Singers' does not seem that remarkable in terms of character development or prose style-still, it's a story I return and return to, when I need the startling gift and portal of stories."
-Chen Chen

About Chen Chen

***
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2016 Chen Chen. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate