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He is bored with Christmas in England and
has begun to wish himself away; if only
he had the money, or had had the sense to have
kept the money, to fly to Stockholm and then
get on a Viking line ferry, to set out
across the Baltic early one red sunny
Northern winter evening. Twenty four hours
through the smashed ice that doesn't stop
the ships these days and to stand on deck
and drink coffee and brandy and feel
all those little islands passing by quietly
in the piney darkness, the summer houses
boarded up, the small boats in their sheds,
the blue and yellow flags furled in their lockers
waiting for next spring. Then arriving
in Finland where it would be even darker
and colder and lovelier, and to know there behind
were the forests stretching up to the furthest distances
of the world, even the earth scented streams frozen
as they fall into the lakes, and the deer
and the silvery elk sleeping out the long hours
till the brief noon in which they could search for food.
And beyond that the Russian border and
cold boys in uniform waiting for each coach,
checking passports and remembering Christmas Eve
at home and, never showing it, wanting to be back.
Then the long, long journey on the quiet, unlit
icy roads between little tree hidden towns
to Leningrad, different now, a December city
hungry and back to its old name,
the Neva and its bridges still as privileged
and mysterious, the canals and streets as haunted.
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