by Basil Bucolic

I hear your swan's voice
overflowed with charms of the Southern night
& with the freedom of Northern expanses
I see your Herman's figure
full of mad hopes & of love fatality
I dream of your sublime Iolanta
condemned to the awful darkness
& revived for the hundred-coloured life
You're standing quietly behind all of them
smiling & listening to your First
in the incessant space of Siberia
& your Second's already germinating inside you
with its most humble & powerful crane.

A poem dedicated to Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. His First symphony is notably penetrated with the Russian song spirit (a folk tune used in the end), and his Second symphony is known as "Ukrainian" with a famous folk melody "Crane" brilliantly elaborated in its final part.