Speaking In Tongues
Scribbling In Voices

ANATOLE TROSHIN

A SONNET

This mid-spring was the most uncertain season,
Unfit to soothe, unable to console.
It interlaced fidelity with treason
And brought all feelings out of my control.

As April fought the sun against all reason
And cooled the earth by harsh winds from the pole,
I jailed myself into the sweetest prison
That only can be built in human soul.

The sentence was peremptory and firm.
It neither left a chance for an appeal,
Nor hope to overcome this mystic spell,

And chained by memories in my phantasmal cell,
Behind the bars, unseen yet hard as steel,
I pliantly will serve my life-long term.