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Poems
227
LERMONTOV IN TIFLIS
Still in love
with the nine year old
he’d been denied, Lermontov
fell in love with the mountains instead.
He sat by the Kura River
writing love songs
disguised as sonnets.
In his pocket his father’s sword;
in the other a lock
of a married woman’s hair—
Countess Emilia’s—
whom he also never held.
But he painted many faces
in the landscape
and wasn’t ready to die.
He was only seventeen,
kept Byron concealed
in his bed, and loved
the cherries that emerged
that May.