Author: Count Rostov, Alexander Ilyich
Cited by
- Amor Towles (1)
- IN: A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) Fiction, American
EPIGRAPH: How well I remember
When it came as a visitor on foot
And dwelt a while amongst us
A melody in the semblance of a mountain cat.
Well, where is our purpose now?
Like so many questions
I answer this one
With the eye-averted peeling of a pear.
With a bow I bid goodnight
And pass through terrace doors
Into the simple splendors
Of another temperate spring;
But this much I know:
It is not lost among the autumn leaves on Peter's Square.
It is not among the ashes in the Athenaeum ash cans.
It is not inside the blue pagodas of your fine Chinoiserie.
It is not in Vronsky's saddlebags;
Not in Sonnet XXX, stanza one;
Not on twenty-seven red...
FROM: Where Is It Now? (Lines 1-19), (1913), Poem, Russia