Heart
beating heart
immense and unending
foaming with the ardent blood of spring
burning with the hot smell of trodden grasses
and red heathers of the Mongol steppes
carried by the gale from the northern plains
Octobriana's heart
her frenzied cry
-- or was it a song?
Who knows?
A song, most likely
Her white she-camel stirred the red desert dust
Out of the unknown they rode to nowhere.
Rockets boomed somewhere overhead
but she did not hear them.
Novas exploded in the galaxies
and she heard only the cry of migrating birds
right overhead
and those flocks drove her on.
The white woman's big breasts leap in the gallop.
Like a shot cougar
she roared her song.
She knew her song had no end
because neither had her journey.
Her song had no word.
Now her screams returned
in thousandfold echoes
from the volcanoes on the horizon.
That echo stirred her blood
in the saddle between her thighs
and in her nipples.
She knew nothing.
Now she only foreboded and felt
that for her there was but one way
and one salvation --
the horizon.
The longing for the horizon and what is waiting
beyond it
the rainbow-coloured atolls with whispering palm trees
the sunken ruins of Lemuria, Atlantis and Mu
speech and rituals of people of another colour
a savage temple shining under an outlandish sun
campfire smoke in the jungle
tropical night alive with millions of insects
seeking after lost caravans
hunts for he-gorillas and safaris for ivory
junks and kayaks on the Pacific waves
perhaps even the Flying Dutchman
a glinting keen assegai
unknown shores
clothed in mists
cannibal drums beating
and the roaring of sacred beasts.
The inextinguishable longing for life
and the wind carries her song to the unknown and beyond
the Javanese kriss at her side clanks through the desert
and the tireless legs of the she-camel
carry Octobriana beyond the horizon
and on
and on
and on
Credit: Petr Sadecky
Extract from the Octobriana & The Russian Underground (1971) Book
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