понедельник, 29 ноября 2004
Мне пришло на мыло от некоего Lloyd`a Bardell`a с MSN`a... The Sun in Russia. Что же, почитаем-с...
Lloyd Bardell The Sun in Russia
The Sun in Russia
The Sun in Russia is the biggest Sun anywhere. You haven t seen the Sun until you`ve crossed the Russian steppe with the Sun in your eyes.
A huge scarlet ball, it swallows the horizon and paints the landscape with its crimson glow. The grasslands look like red velvet being brushed by the wind.
My grandfather used to tell me of how it was when he was a boy crossing the plains in a rickety old cart, drawn by tree horses, called a troika. He said that it was like crossing a sea of blood on land.
In crossing the steppe, grandfather and his father sometimes used the old markers or steles that had been left behind by the raiding tribes of Central Asia. Without the markers, it was possible to get lost and to remain lost for days.
The Huns, the Mongols, the Tartars all passed across these plains emblazoned specters in the glow of the Russian Sun. Shadows on horseback, they were as fierce as the fire of the Sun. They burned across the steppe devouring everything in their paths.
The Russian Sun rules the summer sky. Dwarfing man and manmade features alike, the eye of an angry celestial Cyclops guarding the endless spaces of Russia throughout eternity. The Sun in Russia is the closest that I have ever been to god.
The Rivers if the Russian Steppe run like blue arteries throughout the land. Some flow to the north and some to the south. They punctuate the monotony of the land with a life giving force. I have taken solace in these cool and refreshing waters during the summers as I too navigated the grasslands. In the winter, they are frozen and seemingly lifeless highways of ice haunted by the ghosts of the Russian Winter. But the Russian Sun brings them back to the living every year.
I have seen the Shadow horsemen dance across the ice. The contortions of the dead are like art in crystal that evokes memories of movement in life. The Shadow Horsemen collect these souls and take them to the Ural Mountains I m told. There the dead live again and serve the shadows of the living forever. Damned by the flat lands, the dead find life in death in the hill country.
The dead walk the land again when the Sun of Russia reaches its Summer Zenith and drifts to hang low against the summer horizon.
Who has fallen here? The wayward traveler, the unfortunate soul lost in the immense expanse while following or fleeing the Sun, the soldiers too numerous to count. Their voices now echo in the wind with a hollow resonance only hinting at the fiery essence that the voices once had in life. The wind howls at the Sun and barks and growls at the living. The Sun causes the wind to dance in angry pirouettes across the plains. It runs through the crevices in the land and into those in the skin of the living and the dead. Faces are animated by the wind and glow in a multitude of reds in response. Even the dead sometimes change their grimaces and seem to be beaconed back to life by the Sun driven wind.
I have seen armies of the dead of many nations wandering the plains of Mother Russia. They too are now Russians and will be for eternity. Scarlet and black, their blood nourishes the land and soaks up the life-giving rays of the Russian Sun.
Lloyd Bardell