Telo ("Body")

Telo ("Body")

Note: The Russian refrains are individual prayers for forgiveness and mercy.

The hands that will lay me out will be the hands of my everyman God, as they appeared
to Ivan Illych at the end: a stranger's hands, an earnest graduate student, an old nurse's aide.
My niece, Irene, moya krestnitsa, whom I raised and let down, is dead. Divans, sardonic,
are delivered, parvenu like her, as her body stiffens, mens not sana>. Pray God, not in fear.

Irene, forgive me. Irochka, prosti. Ta budet volya Tvoya.
Gospodi, pomilyu; pomilyu, ti.

The hands that will lay me out will be the hands of my everyman God, as they appeared
to Ivan Illych at the end: a stranger's hands, an earnest graduate student, an old nurse's aide.
Novo Diveyevna , Whites and white birch trees; General Bezsmertni, now immortal, the
black monashki tending mad Orthodox graves, the elders home, living without fear.

The woods where my parents showed me life: Look, tadpoles:
My parents of camps and daughter-strife.
Ancestors, woods, I would you lived:
Forgive the girl who left to live.
Ta budet volya Tvoya.
Gospodi, pomilyu; Papa, Mama, prosti.
Milie predki, berezki, prosti.
Ta budet volya Tvoya. Gospodi, pomilyu; pomilyu, vi.

The hands that will lay me out will be the hands of my everyman God, as they appeared
to Ivan Illych at the end: a stranger's hands, an earnest graduate student, an old nurse's aide:
They tell the other residents of my home: “That lady wrote a book.” I have no Alzheimer's.
My face, without tonus, big as the Ukraiine. They say, popravilas'; I have. No tears.

I loved a few, ignored the many.
Forgive the woman who was so silly.
Ta budet volya Tvoya.
Gospodi, pomilyu; gospoda, prosti.

The hands that will lay me out will be the hands of my everyman God, as they appeared
to Ivan Illych at the end: a stranger's hands, an earnest graduate student, an old nurse's aide:
With a chess king in Queens,“Thanks for the laughter, 1985.” Unorthodox Jew, took a
honeymoon dive in dreadful Cancun; the Columbia Riot he penned, like him, in arrears.

Steven Charles Werner Larissa Shmailo Werner.

Vegas bones and manic ride:
Forgive me, Steven, I was still alive.
Ta budet volya Tvoya.
Gospodi, pomilyu. Stiva, prosti.

Steven's bony arms, his dust, fine old teeth, welcome me: Forgiveness is here, immortal, see?
We host European starlings, distracted squirrels, a tough, rough unkempt bush: I am not forgot
by teenagers fucking, looking at tadpoles, anguishing their parents, smoking pot.

Ta budet volya Tvoya. Gospodi, pomilyu. Deti, prosti.

Larissa Shmailo, alive and well on the upper West Side.