Nest, Terzata #48
The owl fell from its nest
And cringed among roots
Yards away, fanning its breast.
We couldn’t hear the hoots
Of his mother. He made no sound,
Afraid of raptor brutes.
He was lucky he’d been found.
I took off my shirt.
We wrapped him round and round,
Carried him to his tree, unhurt,
And let him loose. He didn’t rest —
Rising on claws, he girt
The trunk with wings up to his nest.
Stalin: his own avatar by Gary Saul Morson | The New Criterion
Could one imagine a president of the United States deeming a novel so important that he would spend three days reading it and give his verdict in the presence of officials in charge of the economy and the army? But in Russia literature is more important than anywhere else. The poet Osip Mandelstam famously remarked that only in Russia are poems important enough for people to be shot for them.
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