Forces of Chaos in Tourmaline’s Life

My Friend Flicka

Bantam-Meggido Hebrew Dictionary (2 copies)

Issues of Nature, The Economist, Mental Floss, Analog, Asimov's, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Chemistry & Life

Midnight's Children

Horsewatching

The Skywatcher's Handbook

Let's Review U.S. History and Government

The Elements of Editing

Everything About Card Reading, Card Spreads and Card Tricks from A to Z

The Silmarillion

The Deptford Trilogy

Webster's Compact Rhyming Dictionary (strangely dusty)

The Squirrels of Canada

Volume 14 of the Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia

Problems in the Origin and Development of the English Language

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

A duo-tang marked “Arsh Version 3”

Les Miserables

Ramona the Pest

All Creatures Great and Small

Brothers Karamazov  in English translation

"Favourite Russian and Soviet Songs" booklet

Heath Introduction to English Literature, Cdn. Edition

“User Friendly” webcomic treasury

Eyewitness Books: Renaissance Art

7 ballpoint pens, each of which may or may not work

Lots of dust bunnies

“What is stuff you can find on Tourmaline’s bookshelf?”
”Correct.”

“I’ll take Forces of Chaos in Tourmaline’s Life for five hundred.”

Actually the category is "A sample of the books I had to move from my old bookshelves and from piles around my room to my new bookshelf., not counting all of the science fiction." Now, courtesy of said dust bunnies, I am coughing. Ugh.

 

Hold On, People, Summer's Coming

I already miss the capital
Although only three weeks have gone by
The chilled passers-by, the faces
That I am lonely for.
It's time to return, as if from prison,
And wondering with whom to get drunk first,
To the spread lines of the Metro,
To that great multicoloured hand.
There, now, after the New Year
All the poplars are in imported garlands
And old Mother Nature is generous
In giving snow that endlessly falls
And the cruel storms of mid-January
And such bad weather rules in this city
That even the cops are all frozen
And in traffic half the city stands still.

And someone writes with a warmed-up hand
On the frozen glass window of a bus,
"Hold on, people --- summer's coming!"
And that makes it seem warmer for all of us.

And when after several days,
Conquering both time and space,
We pierce the airport murk
And sink into the sea of lights,
On my dear ground I will go,
Losing the last of my mind
And of course I will read once again
That inscription in the lilac gloom

That so kindly had been warmed through
On the frozen glass window of a bus
"Hold on, people --- summer's coming!"
And once again I'll feel warm, as will all of us.

And my soul will depart like an iceberg
Drifting through old backyards and old kitchens
To the ones where, in the beginning
We did not believe the ice will ever break
And all of our troubles will shatter
Into scattered tiny sun-dapples
And with a kind Japanese smile
The round-faced summer will come,

When there is no peace in our hearts in the gray days,
As we await something in vain ---
"Hold on, people --- summer's coming!"
Our summer definitely will come again!
--- Oleg Mityaev

The song rhymes, but I couldn't make it rhyme at this time, so you'll have to make do with blank verse to know why, when I saw Mityaev play it on downloaded video of a New Year's bardic retrospective, yesterday on the cold, cold day I dared not leave the house  --- I wept my eyes out and my mother came to put her arm around me. The original "airport" is Sheremetyevo, and Ottawa does not have a Metro like a multicoloured hand --- but hold on, people, summer's coming!

Next cold day, I am going to write this on any frozen glass that comes near. Maybe others will come by "and of course read once again that inscription in the lilac gloom.