'Orioles in the tree, and the length of vowels
Determines the measure of a classical line.
But on one day each year quantity overflows,
Spills from nature's bosom, like Homeric meter.

And like a caesura that day opens with a yawn:
Dawn brings tranquility and almost painful peace;
Oxen in the pasture, and golden indolence
Thwarts me from extracting rich, round notes from my reed.'

--Osip Mandelstam (tr Jane Gary Harris), in: The Silver Age of Russian Culture (1975)



"...a return to the 70's was inevitable." --Word Placements

   "Dialogue of Lenin & Moon"

Here begins the land of phantoms.
Your precious blood,
but they were only dreams.
Shine on the evening waves gray
The master is here!

Dextrous rats.

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