As we enter these parks, we encounter the fleeting remnants of past times and long-gone inhabitants of old manors; they are still promenading in the alleys amid overgrown lawns, swamped ponds and abandoned columns besieged by weeds. In these parks we reclaim our own faint recollections of the time that we don't remember, yet know so well. They conceal themselves in the virgin well of our primal memory, covered in silvery dust and shimmering abrasion marks, they awaken as we saunter here. The parks have their own memories; nothing fades, nothing vanishes. All things cross the creek and find their lasting place, inseparably tied to all that was ever conceived. Once, we will come to these parks to never leave them, echoing in their alleys ever after.
The silhouettes of the distant woods at dusk awaken a vague longing in me. I faintly recall something that was long before me and still unfolds beside me this instant, young as ever, in these parks, in these fields, in these woods; something that has its part in me, but is far greater. They who recall the same are nearby: we share a reality beyond language, embedded in the very core of being. I return to the moment when we drank the twilight in the serene fields and rejoiced in the endlessly real oneness of all. Each plant and each stone was a canto in the timeless epos unwinding before us in all directions at the same time. We were chanting to the sonorous vibrations of the celestial lute’s strings, always one note away from deciphering the canon underneath its concord, still resounding in the faraway woodland.
Jurij Dobriakov