Levitan
The clouds grew fatter toward the end
of his life. He began to risk
cutting the greys with
sickles of slant light from
hidden suns. The wind turned round
and careful the mythic strokes
of smoke on lakewater. The bay
mud of the bog, the blurred valley
in morning fog rinsed into
tight bundles of gathered grass
and dry sheaves. On the wall
of his white house, bright drops
of a violet Italian spring with olive,
mint, and cherry pink. The mountain
close, pristine, and blazing.
Even the deepest shadow lapis-blue.
In anyone’s portrait, Levitan’s eyes
are heavy, gentle, unfocused—
his room on the river at Plyos
always quiet, his heart always failing.
Each new landscape under a veil.
A tiny church on an island
from the air. A storm
over radial clefts of country road.
Crops on a hillside shedding
ochre into currents and bent reeds.
Then, the final turn toward winter—
his people wrapped like exiles in black
faceless and calm, moving moonless
beneath bare trees. Fresh folds of snow
on the flanks of the benches. Clear and slow,
they follow the signals he’s left for them—
a string of flares, the little unloosed lanterns.
MARINA KRAISKAYA is a Ukrainian-American poet. She won the 2023 Markham Prize for Poetry and has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best New Poets. Find her in Zone 3, The Shore, EcoTheo, The L.A. Review, Poetry International, and more. Please visit mkraiskaya.com.