Drinking Chifir in front of Rublev’s Trinity
While Lili hated him because he was in her way, Andreas loved
her more than himself. It was his hope that he would die so
that Lili could wake up to a new life before life had had time to
disfigure their shared body.
– Lili Elbe
When I ask Andreas to pour
the tea, he says her time
is not yet come. He is not
Lili. Lili will not
be a painter, and I need a painter.
I can’t remember which entrance
I came through at the Tretyakov.
It doesn’t matter; the icon isn’t there.
But in my dreams it’s not
been moved to the lavra;
the Revolution has not
failed, and the Soviet delegates
are still guests of Hirshfeld’s,
taking cups and saucers
from the paint-flecked hands of Toni
Ebel. I cannot paint.
I write—like Lili—or I will,
when I learn to read a painting.
I ask Andreas what it means
that the golden mountain behind
the Holy Spirit curves,
and he says it’s a circle formed
by the angels, echoed in their haloes—
an image of perfection and wholeness.
Andreas says we never
see ourselves whole
until somebody paints us. I know that;
it’s why I asked him to tea.
I ask about the tree, why Rublev
placed it on the angel’s left.
Andreas laughs, hands me
apple cake with an Oh, honey . . .
The cake sticks in my throat.
Gamayun flutters past
my eyelids, and Andreas asks me
about the birds. I tell him
Sirin sits and weeps
on the apple branch on the morning
of the Feast of the Transfiguration.
Come afternoon, Alkonost
will take her place and rejoice,
give the power of healing to all
the fruit of the tree. Poets
like Klyuev, I say, employed her
as cipher for St Ephram the Syrian,
who filled his hymns with feminine
imagery, gave God
and Jesus wombs. Andreas
raises his eyebrows. I realize
what I’ve done, and I ask if he knows
how this ends. He says that it doesn’t—
that that’s the point of the circle.
No, I say—not
the icon. Andreas nods.
He knows. The Nazis will burn
the institute, Klyuev will be shot,
and Lili will die. I ask
if it could be painted differently.
Icons were taken down
and renewed often. The riza—
the wrought façade of gold
and jewels that protected the painting
—would be removed, the paint
retouched, sometimes faithfully,
sometimes with changes to suit
new bishops. Then,
the riza replaced, the icon
could hang again unseen.
That’s how it worked before
the Revolution succeeded, before
the anti-sodomy laws
were repealed, and before the Council
of People’s Commissars made Rublev’s
Trinity a possession of the people,
brought down to its original
layer and displayed without
its covering, as though to say
that a land of people free
to love one another and themselves
would be no Sodom—could conceive
no violence to these holy guests.
I think of Khane Levin—
the Jewish soldiers of the Red
Guards who risked everything
to keep Abraham’s tent flaps
open—and I am ashamed
to have prayed for this cup to pass
even before Andreas
looks at me. I clutch my tea glass
holder tighter, trying
not to throw up. I’ve drunk
too fast. Chifir is a gulag
recipe—a legacy of the failed
Revolution. The drinker mustn’t
be afraid of dying, or else
she must have faith in birds
and trees—the Siberian nakedness
of living. Andreas finishes
his cup. A lily, a rose,
and an apple, he explains, are an icon.
He and I and a blackbird
are only a riza.
A Prayer to St. Peter on the Occasion of Wildfires in Quebec
Shimon bar Yonah (may your name be
for a blessing!), sit with me and the haze
that fills the terrace. They told me to stay
in since the winds came from Quebec,
but I cannot deny the ashes
of old friends who have traveled far
to give their shade again. I am lonely
here. It’s been so long since I broke
bread with friends in Parc Maisonneuve
on the Baptist’s day and headed off
to Trois Rivières, to Saguenay or Senneterre,
to sit against the trees with face
to the sky or a page of Rebbe Nachman’s.
That forest is quite different
from the woods of Medvedivka, but it was not
hard to see his footprints, to follow
his depressions in fallen needles and see him
outdoors each day
among the trees and the grasses to talk
with the One to whom I belong. I was a student
in Montréal, lived in the library,
but did not return the book that taught me
to ask all green things
of the field—all the grasses, trees,
and plants . . . to send their powers of life
into the words . . . so that my prayer
and speech are made whole.
From those
pages, I learned the French for “liberation
of sparks”, but not “carbon emission”,
“climate signal”, or “record-breaking”,
so I rode trains all summer,
popped back to the city on weekends
to flag a cab to the Pont Jacques-Cartier
and meet friends for fireworks,
every burst casting smoke
rings on the water like tarnished pennies
—copper coins taken from the treasury
before cock crew. Forgive us;
we knew not what we did.
Now
the sky is orange and the air grey;
everything smells of maple leaves
and metal. I don’t doubt the tsadik
from Breslov tasted it, too, as he lay
consumptive and choking in 1810,
green mouth emptied of words.
I know— (please . . . excuse my cough)
I’m not one you hear from normally,
but who would understand like you
what I must tell haShem? You know
He cannot flood the earth with smoke
if there is found here just one
unrighteous woman not worthy
to die like her rabbi.Reyzl Grace is a Russian American writer from Alaska (the border crossed her) whose poetry and prose have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Room, Rust & Moth, So to Speak, and other periodicals. Her translations of early Soviet literature have been nominated for Best Literary Translations and appeared in In geveb, Pakn Treger, and elsewhere. She currently serves as a poetry editor for Psaltery & Lyre and lives in Minneapolis with her novelist girlfriend, arguing over which of them is the better writer. (It’s her girlfriend.) Read more at reyzlgrace.com and follow her on Bluesky @reyzlgrace.
