The Cicerone in Saint Petersburg
(for G. W.)
J. Quinn Brisben 16 JUN 2004
The ticking of the metronome has awed
The group; its sound meant Leningrad was still
Alive, though no one at the station had
The strength to make a sound, they ordered time
In the midst of chaos: bombs descending, trying
To shatter the frozen lake and sink the trucks
That kept the city barely alive, and long guns
Killing at random for nine hundred days
While Shostakovich composed in the light
Of firebombs, Akhmatova shaped pain into
Regular forms, Zoshchenko told funny stories,
And some at least have survived: halting old heroes
Sixty years later with medals pinned on frayed lapels,
Recognizing the American group with its cicerone
Who knows only enough to say “mir y druzhba”,
Which means “peace and friendship”, and the old reply
“Dodge truck” to show they know who sent the aid
That kept the ordered city alive when shards
Of chaotic metal and falling masonry ripped
So many fragile bodies when the city was still
Leningrad. The old name has come back and the
Bronze horseman and Dostoevsky’s courtyards
And the symmetrical rococo theaters and palaces
Never left, nor has the feeling that someone
Is carrying a bomb intent on making chaos
To make new order where impossible things
Have often been done, so everything is possible.
The bus leaves the museum, which is bedecked
With wedding flowers on weekends, for this siege
Memory is still revered when many ideologies
Have lost their hold and many despots ignored
With impunity although they still can chase you
In your dreams. It is the reminder that once
Common heroes lived and saved the city almost
Despite their leaders and that this artificial place,
Built on swamps as the yellow water from the tap
Reminds us, will live on in spite of all disasters,
Not all of which are even serious, as the group
Recalls a story as the bus passes what they can
Decipher from the Cyrillic as Luna Park, the place
Where the crocodile swallowed the bureaucrat whole
And alive, causing so many problems in a system
Where, as Dostoevsky the joker knew, imposition
Of order on disorder is inherently absurd.
The bus does not stop there because the group
Wants a full afternoon on the parquet floors
Savoring the great treasures of the Hermitage, nor
Can it stop as the group passes the university,
But on the wall of a science building they see
In mosaic tile the record of a superb triumph
Of order over chaos accomplished here
In 1869 by Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev,
And the cicerone bursts helplessly into song:
“Even the densest of students is usually able
To understand this great periodic table,
Seeing the noble gases descending on the right
We sense there must be more to hold the light;
Gallium, scandium, and germanium
Anyone notices who has a cranium
Must fit here and here and here and so
The table must fill with the ordered flow
Of elements; those with radioactive furies
Fall in step to enlighten the Curies;
The table worked; no one knew why or wherefore
Until breakthroughs of Rutherford and Niels Bohr.”
The group is relieved when the cicerone runs out of rhymes;
Order is a triumph in all places and all times;
But order needs chaos to build upon,
And, once it is achieved, there is always more chaos
As far as straight streets, time, or mind can reach.The Cicerone in Saint Petersburg
(for G. W.)
J. Quinn Brisben 16 JUN 2004
The ticking of the metronome has awed
The group; its sound meant Leningrad was still
Alive, though no one at the station had
The strength to make a sound, they ordered time
In the midst of chaos: bombs descending, trying
To shatter the frozen lake and sink the trucks
That kept the city barely alive, and long guns
Killing at random for nine hundred days
While Shostakovich composed in the light
Of firebombs, Akhmatova shaped pain into
Regular forms, Zoshchenko told funny stories,
And some at least have survived: halting old heroes
Sixty years later with medals pinned on frayed lapels,
Recognizing the American group with its cicerone
Who knows only enough to say “mir y druzhba”,
Which means “peace and friendship”, and the old reply
“Dodge truck” to show they know who sent the aid
That kept the ordered city alive when shards
Of chaotic metal and falling masonry ripped
So many fragile bodies when the city was still
Leningrad. The old name has come back and the
Bronze horseman and Dostoevsky’s courtyards
And the symmetrical rococo theaters and palaces
Never left, nor has the feeling that someone
Is carrying a bomb intent on making chaos
To make new order where impossible things
Have often been done, so everything is possible.
The bus leaves the museum, which is bedecked
With wedding flowers on weekends, for this siege
Memory is still revered when many ideologies
Have lost their hold and many despots ignored
With impunity although they still can chase you
In your dreams. It is the reminder that once
Common heroes lived and saved the city almost
Despite their leaders and that this artificial place,
Built on swamps as the yellow water from the tap
Reminds us, will live on in spite of all disasters,
Not all of which are even serious, as the group
Recalls a story as the bus passes what they can
Decipher from the Cyrillic as Luna Park, the place
Where the crocodile swallowed the bureaucrat whole
And alive, causing so many problems in a system
Where, as Dostoevsky the joker knew, imposition
Of order on disorder is inherently absurd.
The bus does not stop there because the group
Wants a full afternoon on the parquet floors
Savoring the great treasures of the Hermitage, nor
Can it stop as the group passes the university,
But on the wall of a science building they see
In mosaic tile the record of a superb triumph
Of order over chaos accomplished here
In 1869 by Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev,
And the cicerone bursts helplessly into song:
“Even the densest of students is usually able
To understand this great periodic table,
Seeing the noble gases descending on the right
We sense there must be more to hold the light;
Gallium, scandium, and germanium
Anyone notices who has a cranium
Must fit here and here and here and so
The table must fill with the ordered flow
Of elements; those with radioactive furies
Fall in step to enlighten the Curies;
The table worked; no one knew why or wherefore
Until breakthroughs of Rutherford and Niels Bohr.”
The group is relieved when the cicerone runs out of rhymes;
Order is a triumph in all places and all times;
But order needs chaos to build upon,
And, once it is achieved, there is always more chaos
As far as straight streets, time, or mind can reach.
