Once, I went out into the blizzard
to buy milk, bread, and some black hash.

Then I didn’t leave the apartment for a week.
Snow erased the street below.

Buried in Dostoevsky, I read
“The Brothers Karamazov”
as though I were on Moscow time.

I didn’t need the outside world
to know what was cold, what was evil,
what was passionate or profound,
— and the hours drifted elsewhere
as if in Russia.