Once upon a winter’s night—
bittersweet, sleepless,
lit by the pale light
of the blue-eyed moon—
you’ll find that your room
is a boat with white sails—
summer bound, ready—
you’ll sail away, away
to the place that has no use
for riddles, because youth
has all the answers, the place
ringing with echoes
of laughter, full of traces
etched on the golden sand.
Meet you there. I’ll stand
on the shore of that place—
so distant, so near—
where time’s but a long tress
wrapped around a girl’s
little finger, twirling, twirling…

Image: Ilya Yefimovich Repin, Moonlit Night at Zdravnevo (1896), oil on canvas, 143 x 90.4 cm, The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk. Public Domain