For 21.06.2025
When you walk through an abandoned meadow
In the early morning in summertime,
You may be lucky to encounter blue lava-like flow
Of radiant wild chicories.
Almost as if the deep blue sky
That you only see in the clear air
On a high Dolomite mountain
Has been spirited into the plant
And shines at you in its many flowers –
A glacier blue whose blues perfumes your mind,
A pale-blue flame whose mirage in the green
Is contoured by a cream of feather clouds!
As the clear dawn sky is inky and almost violet
And lightens through the shades of dark sapphire
To the lighter “sky blue” of full daylight,
So does the colour of the chicory flower
First brightens and then lightens
During the course of the June morning hours.
Chicories are shelters of my unawake eyes,
Chicories are the joy of plein-air poetry showers,
Are friendship-in-bloom objectivised, are love
In the time of shortest nights,
I’m re-recalling the pastel shades of Beliye Nochi
Of Saint Petersburg, the blockade of Leningrad,
“Waltz No. 2” by Shostakovich,
The weeks of first harvests in the “Childhood” of Tolstoy,
My first summers in Gorky…
Attention! A magical gardening month,
Your flowers of dreams coming on stream,
Try to remember them, walk them, lose and reclaim,
A treasure abandoned among the weeds
Whose glacier blue eyes make you thankful.
