From Susan Paddon's first collection of poetry, Two Tragedies in 429 Breaths (Brick Books).

Church bells, distant canticles

called him to the street. He could walk

through everything.

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Like the alleys of Petersburg, ill-dressed

because the show wasn’t going

his way. Maria’s ivory cross

no longer around his neck. She

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was always the first to search, to drop

everything, refuse to sleep

until he came back home. The others

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thought they knew better. Leave him to wallow

in success for a while. But they’d turn

to her first. We need a Chekhov play! A sister

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can work magic on a stubborn man—

for you he’ll do anything, Maria!

So she sent searching prayers off

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in convoys, looking for him and on behalf of him,

knees to the floor next to her bed. And he never stopped

counting on this.

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He was good to her, her brother. Save that July

when a syllable couldn’t be managed to put her mind at ease. Still,

if she had been born the walker. Someone who could get away on foot.

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Who loved to roam the empty streets at night,

the church bells, the distant canticles.

This is the third of five poems in a series dedicated to Maria Chekhova. Read the fourth poem, Maria, 1878.

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