USSR journal, at the Hermitage

21 Jan. The dancers floating in blue air. The musicians on the opposite wall play panpipes and violins while a woman arranges fruit. Fruit trees in full blossom, pears, apples, a wicker-bottom chair. The dancers hide behind each painting. I can’t believe I’m standing in a room with all these Gauguins. A young girl with the basket on her hip, another playing the flute. Islands floating in a vermilion sea. An orange mongrel by the copra jar pricks up his ears, as if listening to the music. An axe by the man’s leg, like a bone. The trees are dancing, supple arms across the distant verdure. A man drinks from a half coconut. In the background, a woman squeezes fruit into her mouth, but she is fully clothed, lying back. Sunset in candy pink and pale chrome greens. How lovely the faces of the women by the cross. Vermilion leaves, breadfruit like large breasts. A woman eating a mango, juice runs down her chin. Lilies like strange goblets, red water lilies drifting in the pond. A child is playing in the blue canoe. One red leaf quivers in the shade, such Tahitian Pastorales. Nature is just a decoration for the painting to exist. I break my reverie, take in the incredible room. This palace. People lived here too. Outside the warped window, falling snow on the winter palace of Leningrad. It fell then, when Peter the Great stood in this room overlooking the Neva River. It’s falling now.