TODAY IS DAVID'S BIRTHDAY.David Miles, born February 5, 1958
My good friend, Anton Gulentsov, in Smolensk, Russia, is blessed (perhaps he thinks sometimes cursed) with a special sense about time. After he read my poem about “real time” yesterday, he jotted off one himself and e-mailed it to me. That such an exchange can happen at all is a “sign of the times.” The ice fishing photographs were taken on March 13th, 2006. Russian winters are very long. An interesting fact about Anton is that he could have written his poem in perfect Russian, English or German.Anton, Alexi, Vladimir, and I went ice fishing near Smolensk in 2006. Bundled against the cold, I made my hole in the ice.Vladimir and AntonAlexi and AntonАнтон ГуленцовAlexi and Anton

Time seems not to matter as much to Anton as it does to most people. Time has a different significance to him. He lives more in the moment than most people do. As I read his poem, I remembered that Alexander Pushkin begins one of my favorite poems with a Latin phrase. Anton ends his poem with “Homo proponit, sed Deus Disponit.” Perhaps it has something to do with the mysterious Russian “soul” Pushkin describes:

Exegi Monumentum
...Alexander Pushkin

I have erected a monument to myself
Not built by hands; the track of it, though trodden
By the people, shall not become overgrown,
And it stands higher than Alexander's column.

I shall not wholly die. In my sacred lyre
My soul shall outlive my dust and escape corruption--
And I shall be famed so long as underneath
The moon a single poet remains alive.

I shall be noised abroad through all great Russia,
Her innumerable tongues shall speak my name:
The tongue of the Slavs' proud grandson, the Finn, and now
The wild Tungus and Kalmyk, the steppes' friend.

In centuries to come I shall be loved by the people
For having awakened noble thoughts with my lyre,
For having glorified freedom in my harsh age
And called for mercy towards the fallen.

Be attentive, Muse, to the commandments of God;
Fearing no insult, asking for no crown,
Receive with indifference both flattery and slander,
And do not argue with a fool.
---------------

MY GUESS...
...Anton Gulentsov,

 
Real Time is Love,
Joy and Laughing and Tears
Though what I feel
Sometimes brings Fears
 
This is every Breath
Kissing lungs inside
This is your embrace 
With eternal Fight
 
Fight with common Sense,
Searching for the truth...
Murder of the thing
That we all call Youth
 
Real Time is dark
Real Time is light
Real Time is Life
That we have inside
 
If you think you wasted it
You did waste it
If you think you enjoyed it -
You did enjoy it
 
This is the right given to us by God -
To choose...in your thinking
Maybe Real Time is what we think NOW?
 
But how can it be Now
If every Now is tightly connected
With the sweet or bitter memories
Coming from the Past...

or with our expectations from the Future?
 
Only He knows what Real Time is...
Homo proponit, sed Deus Disponit