from Notebook St.Petersburg Russia, May 2013

Being here I imagine Anna sitting on my bed and whispers to me in her native tongue while the sunlight seeps through the blinds:

2013 Anja Marais

8th November 1913

Sunlight fills my room
With hot dust, lucent, grey.
I wake, and I remember:
Today is your saint’s day.
That’s why even the snow
Is warm beyond the window,
That’s why, sleeplessly,
Like a communicant, I slept.
~Anna Akhmatova