First time I fell in love
I was six.
That was September 1,
and white flocks of girls
went to school,
and I could not take my eyes off her.

She was about twenty-five,
a young doctor, just somebody
my grandmother met in a town park
when we were on vacation.

They sat on a bench and talked,
I guess, about her plans to marry,
about a new job. It wasn’t so bad,
that southern town in the mountains:
mineral waters, mud baths, trails,
a sort of resort, a lot of flowers.

She was blond, a soft smile
and green attentive eyes, but unable
to recognize me.
I was just another little boy to her
playing in the park.
I whispered in my grandmother’s ear: I love her!
She laughed and told the young woman:
He says he loves you, silly boy.
The woman leaned
and kissed me lightly.

That was not far
from the site of Lermontov’s duel,
where he was lying still alive all night
in the deep ravine. There was
a terrible storm that night,

the books claim. Lermontov
fell in love for the first time,
when he was four. Now
there is a Russian Army base in town:
trains, bringing more troops,
refueling stations, personnel carriers, hangars,
oil, gas, heaps of the surplus dead equipment
on the roadside, teenagers in fatigues
sitting on tanks, smoking Marlboros,

growing roar of the MIG fighters,
taking off for the next sortie
and heading East over the snow-covered plains,
framed by the mountains.

I haven’t seen her since,
and I’ve never known
what happened in her life.
I would not want to know.