Author's website Alexander Korotko

There was quiet water. At the St. Mark’s Square the moon, a frightened

parishioner, all night taking care of the soul, while the last star was
shining brightly and vibrantly, praying, begging for the forgiveness from

heaven and a gift for Venice. Everyone was waiting for the Last Judgement.

The time was tossing like a butterfly, and all the misgivings and fears

came true, and the immense love to the space, to the Gothic and glory

was lying on the chopping block of fate.

Unmoved time. Breakfast of ill-shaved cheeks is imperceptible for a quick

eye. Term of hopes and dreams is over, and underwater kingdom of shadows

is waiting for you in this city exactly not like the ocean bottom of a goggle-eyed

diver. The hotel looks like a otherworldly stray dog. Powerless magnet of the

past life is pulling a barge of centuries, like a dog sled of winds, and a guide

of the wordy history is standing at the stern and speaking sadly Russian with

me about Russia, as if nothing had happened. Someone’s idle escape is over

here by the curious truth of sufferings, a man, filled with a folly of troubles,

comprehends the fright of generations, and he throws the coins of delight into

the broken moneybox of memory, and they melt, like a spoiled,  chilled to the

bone snow in the wet weather. It remains just to endure, to send postcards

home with a promise to return and to find a long awaited for the heart peace.

Touching Venice with the sensitive sight, you are frightened, crying,

hiding somewhere and again crawling with a turtle’s reason to the

immutable, fragile and eternal  foundation of a non-existent being. Venice,

where are you and who are your guests , why do you excite the peace

of clouds that fall with the sunken chest on the water of bottomless channels

like the consumption of centuries? One dock after another, harmonica

of autumn winds is playing , ink stains are flowing down the stars in the

frantic fear of night squares. Come on, go away , don’t wait for the mercy,

now everything will start, the dawn will pierce into the crucifixion of glory,

and the city will disappear , and all will return to the normal course of years.

Singing angels breathe easily in the heavenly choir compared to fosterlings

in the eventual world. The city also is going mad. Due to the long oldness,

due to the eternal oldness, tiredness comes, and slavery darkness returns

the way to eyes, a counter day, where night reigns and emptiness lives.

Channels, like rats, run away off the ship. Venice is drowning, there is a

crowding on the square, and shadows, like leeches dig into the body of

painful streets, and night is burning out like a candle in front of the eyes,

and the sun is rising over the abyss of fear, it just has a lack of patience to

write down on the clear water by samples in words of Bakh call-up notes

to freedom, to salvation, in order not to leave the city alone in trouble.

While the stars of Venetian night are whispering, just send by mail in the black

envelope with a postage stamp of epigone a return address of silence with an

obedient handwriting of water, that was leaking under the balcony in the pale

seasons of dawns, when rays were coming down from the sky on the opera

scene like a ballet and creating with the power of dance incomprehensible

stories on the glossy fate of a carriage, that was going past the life of my

disfigured motherland.