Hanging In A Jar

I send my regards to the poet Leonidze and to his poetry with the same kind of warmth as his wife, his future and his household. I can force myself to be even more explicit: I send regards to the spark of childishness which runs through his hands and his manuscripts and descends upon his children. I do not speak of that false, Raphaelesque and over-sentimentalised conception of childhood, which does not exist except on chocolate boxes, but of the simplicity and foolishness and defencelessness of a child, of its electro-conductivity; of childhood's ability to build a world on a toy and to be killed in crossing a road; of the spectacle of a child in the midst of a great life which has in the meantime forged ahead and with which he copes in child-like fashion, simply, foolishly, quickly and defencelessly. But this message is so weighty that it is best not to give it. (Pasternak)

She saw a funeral cortege pass by today. It pulled into the cemetery by her house. It was a beautiful day and the grass had been not long cut. Blossom still fell from the trees.  It was an open coffin. His face was waxy and drained of colour; just dusty pink brushed onto his cheeks in a room near where he now lay.  A lady, dressed as Pierrot, lay slumped at his feet. She was limp, like an antique doll shaken by a baby. She had cried so hard that her body had dried out completely. Desperately thirsty, she lapped at the pool of tears below, but the salt crystallised and cracked her tongue. Her blood dripped down onto the pool below. A pulcinella waved from her broken reflection, laughing.  The nun began the eulogy. "I dreamt of autumn in the dim glass light, Of friends, with you, in their motley love, And like a falcon, tasting blood in flight, The swooping heart alighted on your glove. But time would grow old, and deaf, and pass, And, lightly touching frames wit...