0299 Customs And Excise

The postman who never looks me in the face (was it something the garlic said?) has just delivered a parcel heavy with history and I’m left holding it and wondering what I’m holding In 1972 Marina Vlady, the film actress who had found favour with the appropriate authorities was handed a suitcase at Moscow’s Sheremetevo Airport by the poet Yeveny Yevtushenko; it contained in its 15 kilograms of manuscript, the lifeblood of 245 Russian poets It took until 1993 for this to be published; my –(how can I dare to call it my) – Russian-red-covered,1078-page copy of this great event, this blood transfusion of poetry, entered Brooklyn Public Library on November 12,1993 only to be removed from the shelf on February 12,1996 scrawled ‘mutilated’ and stamped ‘withdrawn from free use in city cultural welfare institutions…’ all because some reader (some émigré rediscovering his own ‘mutilated’ culture ‘withdrawn from free use’, in the winter warmth of Brooklyn Public Library?) has pencilled an implied question or two by underlining the translation of ‘My Leafless Maple Tree’ by the universally beloved Sergey Yesinin and offered an alternative word in shaky English which looks more like Cyrillic, in the comment ‘he diverted himself with heavy drinking’, for the word ‘diverted’… now I notice also on this page 290 headed ‘Children of the Golden Age’ a small dampness which could be a tear.