That flat Russian "a"

That flat Russian “a”,
wide and flat as a steppe,
open and deep as the seas near Murmansk,
and vast and wide as the wind.

Regina Spektor, you say it in “Apres Moi (2 minutes, 32 seconds)” and I want hear it on the banks of the Neva in spring. I’ve always had a bit of a thing for St. Petersburg after I read Rand’s “We The Living” ( her best or second best story in my book, like Stephen King, she does well under the 200 page mark ).

Strange, I wrote those snippets without knowing the English translation of this section. It’s apparently a poem by Pasternak:

February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing,
While torrential slush that roars
Burns in the blackness of the spring.

music