ekleksographia

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that there would be a story about Russia, that I, I would become Aye Ivanovich was, in a way, written.
Not in Nostradamus, but in a Moscow CCCP Editions volume, where, nearly fifty years ago, Caelebs and Aye fell for an idyllic vignette featuring a pioneeress in a white apron
going out like
red riding hood
wildflower picking
at the edge of birch groves, forest

o rus, O Russia

 
the word Russia, Россия.
A word radiating with a specialty in action; a capacious airplane, model: Beluga. A word heavily burdened with souls too, beaming deep as their deepest undergrounds. Caviar and Chernobyl, all of that.
Also a word of many volumes invoking death, from Ivan Ilyich to Stalingrad

crisis, the fall of the ruble. Scuffles erupt between words. Certain words wish to exclude the Intelligentsia. Pushkin is compelled to intervene. He proposes, for the Academy of Science’s new dictionary, that the word "business" be replaced by the word "pwofiteering". Protestation of oligarchs and power

 
Rolex on their wrists, them too, the bastards!

[....]

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gleam of winter’s end peeking through the barred basement window. Season of the balaclava confines me here underground, extracting the sprouts of the family potatoes. I take this time to recite, intone my declensions. Mumbling the lists of long long words extending out with the consonantal strength of pistons and puffs, chuffing fricatives. 
Unintentional Shamanism

the poem remembers that. From time to time, it comes down to the basement and I hear it across the floor, murmuring in old Russian. Grumbles of Ursae minor and major (careful not to wake the late word "USSR" in its mausoleum)

one day, much later, forty years later, I am in Novotcherkassk, in the empty cathedral, its drafty February vault.
Aye, Aye Ivanovich, a moment of temptation to don a shawl and join the small group of women at the back intoning in low voices with a pope who does not stop leaving the sanctuary like a devil bursting from its box, swishing the iconstasis each time, making it quiver.
They pray me not to examine the nave but rather the ground, the numerous oil stains spattering the wood flooring. A reminder, I am told, of the Soviet era when the cathedral served as a warehouse for agricultural vehicles.

outside, footsteps in the snow, a bit shaky, ш щ ш щ ш щ ш щ ш щ ш щ ш щ ш щ ш щ ш щ 

hooray, Russia? More like de profundis (Shostakovich approves

if you will allow it, in support of Shosta, a gentle flashback. In the absence of a novel, a story about Russia regardless. A silly story, a high school foreign language class story. We listen to Songs of the Forests. Later comes the somber tempo of the 15^th Quartet for strings.
Its tonality? E flat minor-dreary steppe. A de profundis walking mournful, nocturnal, elegy as epilogue.
How to play it? In such a way, Шостакович would have said (to the members of the Taneyev quartet performing it), in such a way that makes the flies fall dead from the ceiling and the audience leave the concert hall out of pure boredom...

[....]