The New Criterion

1904

Moscow! You should have seen the city then.
Even in winter, the slate-blue river locked
in ice below the Kremlin walls, the glaring
plain of small boats frozen against the banks,
the crowds in lush fur capes or threadbare shawls
flowed through the shadowed streets as one dark current,
the city blazing like a photograph.

Cities like Moscow can be too much with you;
they are too great, as other cities are
too small. We found ourselves in Badenweiler
that July, my brother nervous and exhausted—
nothing, the doctors claimed, but his exams.
We had fled south, south, to the smoky hills
of the Black Forest, smudged as a fairy tale.
The season then was running near the flood,
the preening crowds in frills of summer dress
making slow progress down the promenades
that pierced the town, to see an ...

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