Take vodka, my brother.
We’re alone in the green trellised tumbledown.
Built by a disgraced Lieutenant General.
Well, disgraced when we remember him. Best to forget.
He died of soft brain
and will not bother us, and I must tell,
Alyosha, in dreams, I twist my shirt
beneath the willow,
and I am planning, beneath absolutely pathetic limbs,
planning, think:
there is a trunk amid those wisps,
there is death in a shirt.
And need be, suspenders. I wake happy.
I am not afraid, Alyosha, a day like any of my life.
But, Mitya, you forget: a day like any, yes,
perhaps, but shorter.
**************************************************
Ritual
I stopped opening the cabinet
when I decided brandy was bad for me.
That was threeish.
Six, Smerdyakov waked me.
I feel robustly thirsty.
In Russia, of course,
if you are the son of Fyodor,
you are Fyodorovich. Is the boy my son?
With Reeking Lizaveta? Who scaled my fence
to bear him and die? Crazy, smocked, there for a dare
Lizaveta? Well then, Fyodorovich. But Reeking,
so: Smerdyakov Fyodorovich.
His soul is stump-legged.
His eyes reflect light
like a dog’s.
Tonight, he will sleep in the house.
Tonight, I want company.
He whimpers like a dog
before his fits.
Perhaps only that’s why I trust him.