the egg

 . . . a Russian doll grins on a sill above the candle in my reading room; bright colors stain the eyes and apron, shawl and round babushka on the smooth curved surface of the paper shell.

Was here I learned from Pushkin how the hungry mud devours wagon wheels; from Dostoyevsky how a uniform consumes the soul
. . . from Nabokov, a modern verse, now hung across the carcass
of an ancient melody. . .
all these things a paste and paper doll portend for me.

A second candle, now as useless as the dusk;
a thin red line bent upward, to a smile;
a finger rising from the yellow pages of my book;
a pot of red paint and a hungry brush;
strokes my stubbled chin.

Which one of these things is a clue . . . how will I ever know?
Up there on a dusty shelf, a puzzle sits behind a pair of jet black eyes;
an answer to the number of archangels fussing over Jesus on some tiny pin?
a map to where the line between cruel Truth and morbid Hesitation lies?
A doll within a doll within a doll within a doll?
. . . or empty space?

or does my candlelight prepare me well enough
to know her simply by the wrinkles on her frozen face?

Inside your silly mocking shell there is a scheming calculus;
a diabolic nothingness with a ruby paint-pot grin,
a purple shadow shoved against the plaster wall,
crisscrossed to distraction in some vague yet busy Ukraine scrawl . . .

a hollow'd egg,
inside of which lies far more possibility than chance;
and so I simply watch the purple shadow dance.
A Russian doll sits on the shelf,
and I'm supposed to solve this for myself?