What Could the Russian Soul and Love Ever Mean to Czech Anticommunists And Anti-Russian Liberals?

 

From time to time, once in a while,

in Café Slavia we would sit—
Rudolf Matys—and only now
I came to see, to know—

all that time my companion was
both Matys, hence Matthew,
“Gift of God,” and Rudolf,
that is to say, a “Famous Wolf,”

a strange and distant kin
to an Adolf, once a visitation
from the West in my dream
near Arkansas’ Little Rock.

And among other things
he asked, “How is Mr. Křovíčko,”
meaning George W. Bush
(for in Czech bush is křoví,
a křovíčko is little bush,
and křoví evokes

something, someone
who is hiding—skrývá—
“behind bushes”—
which could be
even a wolf himself.

Wine watered our talk.

And we even talked of Onegin,
and, to Rudolf, neither he
nor Pushkin meant too much,
except that Holan tried to mock
Pushkin’s rhyming scheme
but then let it be—

and all that novel’s talk
of Russian soul and love
Rudolf cleaned up
in one little detached coda

about what he missed:

instead of just sending
Onegin away from her lap
with a note of proud,
yet aching love,

Tatiana should have
used a clue Pushkin himself
offered out for sale—

when he wrote that, in his gaze,
a woman’s foot, especially if
in public under a table’s cloth,
beats each Diana’s breast
and any Flora’s cheeks
(Onegin I.XXXII):

so why shouldn’t—or didn’t—
the lady, as a men’s and poetry’s
good student, learn how to bob
and move Onegin, that well-bred devil,
with nothing—but the meter
of her toes?