Author's website Alexander Korotko

On his Facebook page, Alexander Korotko published a review of a poem by poetess Leyla Dmitrieva.

Here is what the author wrote:

I want to share with you a poem I just read on the page of poet Leila Dmitrieva and the impression it made on me. I was not just surprised, I was shocked. Before I show you this poem I will give you a few lines that I left in Leila’s comment under this poem.

“… Like sisters of mercy,
stood the dark courtyards.”

I am convinced that under these two lines, not just with pleasure, but with pride, every great poet would sign. And you have a lot of such lines. You’re brilliantly wasteful.

And also, when I read your poetry, I don’t realise what century it is.

* * *

As if we were floating in silence 
On the pavements of the city
Invisible lightnings were burning us 
And the snow was white and wet 
Like sisters of mercy 
The dark courtyards stood.
Trees were an army of salvation,
Nodded to us as we walked.
As if time were invisible,
We were blown away by a wave of explosion,
Where rusty plants
And oil feeds on the earth.
On the zebra, in oil paint 
We recognise this city
That it’s arrogant and unkind,
And that we still live.
A hundred years have passed, a hundred years have melted away,
As Antarctica would have melted,
The iron corset of the suburbs
There’s savagery and practice everywhere.
Here they pour, there they wait for women,
Who can be seen from the road,
In their short khaki french tops,
In their caps and boots and bodysuits…
You and I looked at each other
And we drove off into the sunset
There over the river it stretched,
A lemon scarlet, slippery ball.
And then it turned purple,
As if we were in a garden
And the branches were all bent in snowballs,
And time moved backwards.
Transients of the temporary abode,
On the ice they were entrechat,
Not ballerinas, but amateurs,
They fell gracefully into the snow,
and the drunkards looked on in their wake,
They laughed and laughed and laughed, so what?
We’ll still be us,
Funny girls in unbuttoned coats!