Excerpt from the book Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds

The Causeway

Come near. The day is closing down. Dinner is
burning, the eternal is proving to be temporary, the
divine is showing signs of being cruel. So come near.

Talk to me.
And as you do,
because you do,

a car crosses the causeway, coming home. Human
beings, expelled from their beds in the morning—
tired people, who have made very little money—
are walking across the causeway, coming home.
The animals who were loyal to them are coming
home. Birds flock here, dreams, slave generations
still chained to their overwhelming sacrifice are
dragging themselves across the causeway, coming
home. The last survivors are coming home. Love,
wounded and weary; love with its few remaining
followers, its bag of candles and threadbare
dancing shoes, takes one last look back as it crosses
the causeway, coming home. The ghosts of those
who thought that they would never get here
are here now, on the causeway, coming home.

And the day is closing down.
So come near.
Talk to me.
And as you do,
because you do,

aching decades of labor and struggle begin to
climb down from their machines and even I,
skilled with my tools, proud of my weapons,
allow that it may be time to lay down these
great endeavors and come home. Oh how long
we have all traveled and how far to set just
this first footfall upon your sacred promise
that in the evening, there would be a bridge.