ANNIVERSARY AND ONE MORE POEM

On August 16, I will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of my move to the United States. When I arrived in Philadelphia back then to start my PhD program at Temple University, for a first few weeks I had the strangest feeling. It seemed like I was in a movie, a character living on the screen. Everything was unusual - faces, voices, tastes, smells, and even temperatures - but not unfamiliar. As if I have experienced all of that somehow, somewhere... 

A few friends of mine who visited the United States or immigrated here described their sensations using the same "like in a movie" comparison. How come? An explanation seems to lie on the surface. Even though I had never been to the US prior to my arrival in 2011, I experienced many aspects of its life by watching films and TV shows imported to Russia. Representations are far from perfect, but sometimes they can have this strange power to influence our perceptions and emotions.

When I still lived in Russia and could not even imagine moving to the US one day, I wrote two poems about a person stranded in a far-away land. I shared one of them on my blog a few months ago. Today I want to show you the second one. It was not about me back then, and it's not really about me now, although I did become a kind of wanderer myself. I do not feel as lonely and lost as the narrator. But I can relate to his description of the "strange looking-glass resemblance" between our present and our past - between stories we were told, dreams we dreamt and roads we are walking now.

Chestnuts bloom here every spring,
​Almost like where I came from.
This strange looking-glass resemblance
Scares me in everything here: the sea, the pier...

Every blade of grass has its own "almost".
A forgotten umbrella looks like a prop.
Little paths stubbornly dead-end
Into the sloppily drawn horizon.

The voice of the sea has turned into tiresome nagging.
Nothing makes me happy anymore.
And in the evening, it is cold and crowded
In my soul, which will never bloom again.

Здесь каждую весну цветут каштаны,                
Почти как там, откуда я пришел.                       
И этим зазеркальным сходством странным         
Меня здесь всё пугает: море, мол…           
                       
Свое «почти» есть у любой былинки.
На реквизит похож забытый зонт.
Упрямо упираются тропинки
В небрежно проведенный горизонт.

И голос моря стал ворчаньем
нудным.
Ничто меня не радует уже.
А вечерами холодно и людно
В моей отцветшей навсегда душе.