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Baron Wormser

1910

(for Andrey Gritsman)

The somnolent, grasping nations do not ruin the known world. Amadeo and Anna, heady with love, stroll amid the Luxembourg Gardens, pausing when their rapt pulses dictate. Lenin gives up his rhetoric to raise orchids. Trotsky turns to the Kabbalah and ponders the wisdom of mystery. Capitalists renounce their riches to become mendicants. The spiritual, as evinced in the paintings of Amadeo and poems of Anna, dwells unthreatened. Progress spends years on a haiku. Scientists do not cut down the tree of knowledge. Electric excitement sits each drowsy afternoon with a glass of aged Burgundy. Cannons are for small children to climb on. Horses snort peaceably at the occasional, eccentric car. Amadeo finds the money for more paint, Anna for more ink. Neither the colors nor the words will fade: they know this. Lovers sit on benches surrounded by other lovers, their fates unencumbered by pistols and flags. Like confetti, treaties are tossed out second-story windows after a night of reveling: death to all dire solemnity. The Americans do not have to become lost. The Russians do not have to become Soviet. Amadeo and Anna kiss, not chastely, but full on, time’s true essence.