Odessa Portal - Clara Rosemarda

[Larry Robinson]

Odessa Portal


Where does yearning reside?  Down the tree-lined streets of Odessa, two hundred 
years a seaport, my mother’s city, buckled and worn. You longed for your city of laughter and intrigue, for the city of your childhood, its wide boulevards, promenades and outdoor concerts, Mozart filling your young ears. “Watch where you walk,” our guide tells us.  “Avoid the open manholes.”  Still, I fall into the underworld, streets where Red and White Armies once marched, where blood spilled dark before these pastel palaces, down the streets of your city, no longer yours. Who is mother?  Who is daughter?  Traces of you in the collage of cracked cement and dust.  I am looking for signs of the girl you were, shaded by these linden trees. Clouds gather in the autumn sky.  I search for remnants of your life in hidden courtyards, through curtained windows, on iron balconies. I search for the lost daughter, touch the peeling paint of these buildings, run my fingers over their pink and peach and lime green -- Divas past their prime. What is Desire? Dappled memories of your past. The light shifting leaving the pages of your longings.  
   
                        - Clara Rosemarda