Babayaga

Nearly every crone bleats like a goose,

“Oh, I didn’t choose to be this way,
my papa went heavy with a spiked belt,
my husband fucked my virgin daughters.”
Ah, cry at the hurricanes, spit at the storm.
You could pile these melancholies higher
than all the tsar’s dead armies.
We never had patience or time for complaints,
such wasted words, tiresome as a winter’s rutabaga.
Flee the darkness of the past, run or drive or fly away.
Too many fools bear the burdensome bad of what was,
it spills out of their saddle bags and stuffed steamer trunks,
as they travel along slow bearing a heavy load,
while life itself flies fast by.
Running through nights with us you learned right,
to ride light and keep your history shut tight,
or leave it on the roadside far behind
for the village clocks count in chimes
all the time that is wasted,
nursing grief to no profit.

Elga never burdened us with her tale,

and we respected her restraint,
for the scars of fortune’s razor were not hard to see.
And I never asked Zoya, either, nor did she talk,
though we had guessed the shape of her history
long before the beasts finished
ripping out that old man’s throat.
That’s about it, as for the rest, bah,
our pack grows weary of the bitches’ barking,
on and on sobbing sagas so sad any bard
would bash his head in rather than recite.
Cynical, yes, but we chose this life
not because we were beaten or broken,
not angry or aching—
no man ever put me down, no—
we picked this path only
to drink at life’s fresh spring,
ever and anon.
We thirsted for the ripeness
of a thousand soft fruits,
oh, let me put my hands on a peach ripe this day,
but, alas, see here, my palms are nothing but air now,
and there would be tears in my eyes too
if there were eyes for weeping.