I.

Time stands still in winter;
only the clocks keep track.
There’s no day, no night, just
work or no work. Friends visit
at midnight, in the morning,
in the afternoon, drinking toasts
to everything: women, love,
friendship, vodka. It’s always 
black outside, shiny from rain, 
sleet, warming snow; the river 
where Rasputin met his death
is sluggish, almost still. Snow falls 
and doesn’t leave. On the corner 
there’s a phone booth 
encased in ice, filled neck-high 
with old snow. Parents 
take their children, bundled 
like space men, outside to play 
in the dark. Days are opaque 
with black tea and vodka
and every day I feel a little sick. 
                        

Night in the morning
Night in the afternoon
Night of cold-needle rain
Night of sleet and snow

Night of ice-slick streets
the river's frozen mirror
phone booths cocooned
in wind-blown ice

Ice up to the golden haunches
of the bridge-guard lions

Night-dark afternoons of children
rolled and bound in heavy layers
playing in a frozen park

Bright-lit night in a room full of voices
the stink of vodka, humans, wet wool

Nights when we're trailed on frigid walks
by men with stern faces under fur hats

Dark nights stuck in a room with one man
whose affection no longer feels safe

Wind slices at the ice-covered gulf.
Dark morning turns pale at noon:
the sun's shadow jeers from the horizon.

Leningrad then, Petersburg now,
a people's sweet dream of the future
abandoned on an icy road,
a scrap of paper
driven to a filthy pulp
                        

They take us to a club way in the forest,
give us skis, teach us how to cross-country.
Soon we are on our own, the whisper
of our skis, the wind through pines,
the only sounds. The forest is dense.
I remember a man in college
who made me miserable for months,
the way his beard was, soft and thick;
I used to think somewhere there's a forest
like this man's face. And here it is.

They serve us lunch on China plates
with silverware. Warm meals with plenty
of wine. They ply the Voice of America guy
with vodka yet again, certain he must
have something to offer them.
It's our last city, and they still
haven't found the spy! He humors them,
gets drunk and silly, sings songs,
laughs at their jokes, makes some of his own.

We eat and head out to the snow again,
leaving Mr. VOA to entertain their "troops".
Later, there's sauna and more snow,
then back to our hotel home.
For the rest of our time in Minsk,
this is how our days off go, local citizens
kept safe from our corrupting influence.