A Gentleman in Moscow

How well I remember

When it came as a visitor on foot

And dwelt a while amongst us

A melody in the semblance of a mountain cat.

Well, where is our purpose now?

Like so many questions

I answer this one

With the eye-averted peeling of a pear.

With a bow I bid goodnight

And pass through terrace doors

Into the simple splendors

Of another temperate spring;

But this much I know:

It is not lost among the autumn leaves on Peter’s Square.

It is not among the ashes in the Athenaeum ash cans.

It is not inside the blue pagodas of your fine Chinoiserie.

It is not in Vronsky’s saddlebags;

Not in Sonnet XXX, stanza one;

Not on twenty-seven red . . .

Where Is It Now? (Lines 1–19)

Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov

1913