by Mary Buchinger
I walk the shadow
of the railing it is straight
and keeps me close
to the river though it
will move as the earth
turns through the day
it is a steady shadow
I can walk on to ponder
the emptiness
from which everything
comes and to which all
returns Gogol wrote
himself into a place
of incompatibility with
the immorality of the world
to be good he reasoned was
to be gone his own family
owned dead souls he burned
the second half of his book
where he’d imagined a purified
redeemed rogue Chichikov
Gogol quit eating and died
His Overcoat remains and I
want a theory of everything
a theory that begins
in one place and connects
to another like this river
beside me that divides cities
even as it unites and sustains
a self-evident truth
something I can show
my mother for her
to see how she Gogols me
I want to say that love
of this cannot abide
love of that I look up
and see the lit two-thirds
of the worm moon its faint
see-through reflected light
holds steady in the cold spring
sky with cities on its banks
yellow sculls scour the river
MARY BUCHINGER is the author of three collections of poetry: e i n f ü h l u n g/in feeling (2018), Aerialist (2015) and Roomful of Sparrows (2008). She is President of the New England Poetry Club and Professor of English and Communication Studies at MCPHS University in Boston. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Diagram, Gargoyle, Nimrod, PANK, Salamander, Slice Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere; her website is MaryBuchinger.com.
Photo: “Shadows” by Sam Cox
Psaltery & Lyre 