The Welcome
Budem kak solntse!
- Balmont
“Let us be like the sun!”
- Balmont
Let us be like the sun—
slice open pineapples,
catch their yellow nectar
drop by drop as they spin
like stern water wheels in
the white village. Begin
pure labor and welcome
the wooden turn of wheels,
apple presses wrung by white
hands under the white sun,
until the pineapple
has become a dry and
wooden orb by the door.
No explosion now of
nectar here from yonder.
So take down the bitter
Fruit; pull the pin; fling it far.
Sept., 1985
Gorham, Maine