We still visit the University which now serves as the last link to the known, familiar world, the world that we once knew. This dying world left us face to face with the unknown, unfamiliar, exciting, teasing, bittersweet forbidden future. Everything has changed. The very colour of our days has changed from grey and yellow to blue, pink, and black. Life has risen as a mountain of unprecedented height. The chasms of doom were of indescribable darkness. The flatness was gone completely. From time to time, the sun gathers one individual beam of light and shines on us, singles us out. There is no escape. And sometimes, the sun is as dull as the moon. But maybe, it is the moon. Our vocabulary also changes. All words related to the infinite step forth and occupy the front page: boundless, eternal, immeasurable. We apply these words to ourselves: my boundless love, my eternal patience, my immeasurable sadness.
October days were written on the falling maple leaves
Red, yellow, sad and golden. Each day was falling
From the tree of time into the Pandemonium of past,
Each falling day disguised as last.
The maple leaves like open palms presented to a fortune teller,
The palms to hold, to read, to kiss. The falling leaves
As treacherous as balding head, the final countdown
That makes time to be reversed, to tell how little is left
Instead of spelling out the hours passed.
Each look, each glance absorbing the precious face
Was framing picture of beloved -- to save, to keep,
To treasure during future hours of despair,
To memorize and bring to life, recalling every fold of skin
And curve of breast, and scent of hair.
Each day -- is doomed Tschaikovsky’s swan
With an obsession to become a burning Phoenix.
Between Sputnik and Gagarin by Alex Braverman