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LETTERS TO YESENIN: 10, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: It would surely be known for years after as the day I shot
Last Line: Be trailed, got in my car and drove to new york nonstop.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Despair; Russia; Yesenin, Sergei (1895-1925); Soviet Union; Russians


It would surely be known for years after as the day I shot a cow. Walking out
of the house before dawn with the sky an icy blackness and not one star or
cockcrow or shiver of breeze, the rifle barrel black and icy to the touch. I
walked a mile in the dark and a flushed grouse rose louder than any thunderclap.
I entered a neck of a woodlot I'd scouted and sat on a stump waiting for a deer
I intended to kill. But then I was dressed too warmly and had a formidable
hangover with maybe three hours of sleep so I slept again seeing a tin open-
fronted cafe in Anconcito down on the coast of Ecuador and the eyes of a piglet
staring at me as I drank my mineral water dazed with the opium I had taken for
la turista. Crippled syphilitic children begging, one little boy with a
tooth as long as a forefinger, an ivory tusk which would be pulled on maturity
and threaded as an amulet ending up finally in Moscow in a diplomatic pouch.
The boy would explore with his tongue the gum hole for this Russian gift. What
did he know about Russia. Then carrying a naked girl in the water on my
shoulders and her short hairs tickled the back of my neck with just the
suggestion of a firm grip behind them so if I had been stupid enough to turn
around I might have suffocated at eighteen and not written you any letters.
There were bristles against my neck and hot breath in my hair. It must be a
deer smelling my hair so I wheeled and shot. But it was a cow and the muzzle
blast was blue in the gray light. She bawled horribly and ran in zigzags. I put
her away with a shot to the head. What will I do with this cow? It's a
guernsey and she won't be milked this morning. I knelt and stared into her huge
eyeball, her iris making a mirror so I combed my hair and thought about the
whole dreary mess. Then I walked backward through a muddy orchard so I wouldn't
be trailed, got in my car and drove to New York nonstop.





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