By Maksimilian Voloshin
(To L. C Bakst)
“Three spirits, in the shape of frogs... will gather together the universe’s tsars for a final battle... at the place they call Armageddon...”
- Revelation, XVI, 12–16
He placed his hands over my shoulders,
(I don't know who he is,
But that the human heart collapses,
Pierced by fear.)
Then walked me up a hill,
With his finger pointed around it.
Never, not inside my deepest fever dreams,,
Have I known torments
So dimly unchartable,
Nor watched such desolation reign!
Before me, vast and mist-crawled,
Enmeshing death’s delirium,
Pulsated into stone
A swelling shape of a whole continent.
And no matter where I'd rest my shaky gaze –
Grew barren parches of savanna
Devouring away,
Warping mouths of dried-up rivers,
Flattening peaks;
And edging this desert view
Piled a monolith blueness
Of snowy mountains,
Ancient scrolls,
Billowed by a cloudscape’s bedsheets,
Ripping seamless
With inset swells of flame-muzzled thunderclouds
Barely hoisting
The drooping weight of the sun
Arranging the final lilac of its swords, rough-bladed Beams paling with foregone goodbyes
Which shackled my throat with grief,
Pressing in
Until, nearly airless,
I inquired:
“Oh, seer... But teach me this:
How big? How big could they grow, these storms
That we are now watching
Breaking across the far granite ridges?”
But only thus he answered:
“Right here,
When the Day of Final Judgement breaks,
Across these parched up ocean beds
Three frogs shall carry forth
All tsars and tsarinas of this old world
Into the final scolding of our earthly days.
For these stones here thirst,
Thirst since every beginnin
For intoxicating bile of God’s own grating.
And the name for these parts is – Armageddon!”
- October 3rd, 1915, Biaritz