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Pasternak Time: “Sorry, I missed what you were saying”


Pasternak Time: “Sorry, I missed what you were saying”

Sorry, I missed what you were saying.
I was thinking of someone from another lifetime,
Her stride across the courtyards of youth,
Her tempting laugh and forgotten lines,
Her sharp readings and fatal portraits,
Her lasting illusions, and erstwhile friends.
These dreamy thoughts came from something you said.
Sorry to have drifted off.
Something about a play by Chekhov,
That would be it.
We are conscious the way the mind moves off
In directions of its own, like in Pasternak.
Her mother felt the film was not the book.
Felt? “A complete misrepresentation.”
The book makes you see up front
How a woman can follow a man
Through life, even when she is long gone.
Or will walk around the corner
Of another city, just by coincidence.
She went off in search of diamonds.
Maybe she found a few,
Interstate, overseas, under a rock.
The life of the theatre,
The theatre of life, interchangeable,
Over and over. The cast
Something like a play by Chekhov.
But I have to admit
Ninefold nine times nine I’ve wished
To talk it all further like we talked
When her laughter ruled the world.
To hear her bright words
Right down to stuff like Pasternak,
How life is the permanent revolution,
How he telescopes past and future,
Conscious of the way the mind moves off:
Sorry, I missed what you were saying.
To laugh at how Chekhov has them
Striding across courtyards,
Making friends, only to lose them.

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