WEBVTT

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I'm still a child
in some ways myself.

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And while I was watching
this fly swatter

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and whirring off in the wings, I
also noticed a large red button

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over here.

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Just no other buttons.

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Just one large red button.

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And on it, it has written stop.

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And you know how you
like sometimes it

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seems irresistible the
idea of jumping off a cliff

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or breaking a bubble
that someone's blown?

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I wanted to push that

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Fortunately, there's
some sanity in my life.

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And I didn't.

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I don't know what
would have become

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of us if I had pushed him.

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The source of the
sanity in my life

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read poems to you
a few moments ago.

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And this is a poem somewhat
for her, somewhat for myself.

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It's called "The City
of the Olesha Fruit."

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In it, you have an old couple.

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The man speaks he has
an imaginary city.

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That he's built in his mind
and that he visits each day.

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Sometimes he rains on it,
sometimes he snows there.

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Watches out for the children.

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So he has some
conversation with his wife.

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His hero is the Russian,
the great Russian writer

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Yuri Olesha.

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And he speaks to
Olesha in the corner

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often when he's not speaking
to his wife or to us.

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It is a love poem.

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And it's bizarre too.

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"The City of the Olesha Fruit."

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Outside the window
past the two hills,

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there is the city
where the colorblind

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are waking to blue pears.

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Also, there are
the blue treetops

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waving to the schoolgirls,
who step harshly

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along in winter dresses.

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Out of the mouths of these
girls come the cones,

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their breath, a mist like
the little silver ear

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trumpets of deaf children
tip toward whatever

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it is they are almost hearing.

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An old man without
legs not yet in a chair

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has invented the city
outside the window.

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And everywhere
now, it is morning.

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He hears his wife
climbing the stairs.

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What he thinks what to do.

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I might say that the strong line
of her back is like a spoon.

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He says, good morning,
and how are you?

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She says, Rumen,
I told you the hen

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should have been put up
with straw in the attic.

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Last night, the
fox ate all of her.

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But the dark spurs under
her chin and a few feathers.

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His wife gathers
him up in her arms,

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walks to the far
corner of the room,

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and lowers him into a
straight chair beside a table.

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Only last year, he would
sit and stare at the shoes

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he could wear without socks
and with the laces loose.

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A tub is filling
in another room.

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He thinks poor widow is
inside the stomach of a fox.

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My wife's idea was
not a good one.

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Where would widow
have found the scratch

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and gravel for her shells
while up in the attic?

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And what about the rooster?

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What about the poor rooster
on his railing by the barn

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inconsolable crowing?

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Rumen remembers a Russian
story about a copper rooster

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with a green fern for a tail.

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Rumen's favorite writer is
the great Russian Yuri Olesha.

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Rumen thinks.

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Yes, Yuri, my companion,
there is cruelty

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in the format of a kiss.

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And the blue skins of
pears in a heap on a dish

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leave a memory of myself
as a boy running along

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the flume water down
past the village ditch.

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But Yuri, in my city, all the
streets are just this moment

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being swept.

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Old women in jade dresses
sweeping, sweeping.

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And soon, it will rain for them.

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And then I'll return their
sun, a noon sun to take away

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the wet before the children
rush out under the bells

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for an hour's recess.

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Oh, Yuri, just beyond the
grin of a smelly old fox,

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that's where widow
is our best hand.

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Yuri, my legs I think
are buried in the Orchard

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beside the stable, where all the
hospital horses in my city wait

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poised for an emergency.

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These horses are constant.

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How they race down the
cobbled streets for me.

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They never trample the children.

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Rumen, his wife called, do you
want a haircut this morning?

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She steps into the room.

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He smiles at her.

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She's buttoning her blouse.

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And she smiles back to him.

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Rumen, would say to Yuri that
sometimes her yellow hair got

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into the corners of his mouth.

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And Yuri, that was when
I most missed my youth.

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Then Rumen, but
again, fall silent.

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He was off opening a
rain cloud over his city.

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It was winter when he woke.

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But now, I'm sure it's not.

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There are few dark flowers.

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Rumen feels that is
best for the children

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if they walk to school
in the clear winter air.

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But once he gets around
to raining on his trees,

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streets, and houses,
well, then he

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changes everything to
late July or August.

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But the evenings in his city
are always placed in autumn.

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There is the smell
of wood smoke.

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So pleasant, and leaves burning.

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Flocks of bluebirds
would be flying south.

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And so there is the
obscurity of many lives.

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Not yours, Olesha.

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But mine and my wife's.

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Two characters who are
perhaps in a shade just now,

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sipping on a iced summer
tea with its twigs

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and leaves floating
around inside.

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We're giggling.

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I think about how shy we were as
lovers that first winter night.

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When I kissed her in the dark
barn right in her open eye,

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I tried again.

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And I missed again.

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To accidentally kiss a
young girl in her open eye

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is I think you're the
beginning of experience.

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I did find her mouth that night.

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But then the following winter,
a week before our wedding,

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I missed again.

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This time, I kissed
a small bare breast.

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That wasn't an accident.

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I had kissed her in an
open eye, a tender place.

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The single clear, tear
running down her face,

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and the surprise for she
reached out to touch my hand,

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and found my thigh.

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The shyness of lovers as softly
at night they miss and miss

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while following an old map.

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Yes, the format of a kiss.

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But in the city of
the Olesha fruit,

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there's no war, no
sex, no sickness.

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But all of the flowers
are posthumous.

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A citizen never dies in my city.

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He just wakes one
morning without his legs.

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And then he's given a city
of his very own making.

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In this way, his
existence narrows

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while expanding like the diary
or like this landscape with two

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hills seen through my window
early each and every morning.

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But Yuri, outside
this window, yes, I

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know what's there is there.

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And all of it
indelible is our memory

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of blue pears washed
and being eaten

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in the sunlight of a city,
that is being constructed

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all of the time.

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It's new gold,
domes, and towers.

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Just beyond two hills
in the winter air

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and somewhere inside the mind.

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