LETTING THE PAST IN

ANATOLY MOLOTKOV

In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at
any rate more stable, more resilient than the present.
- Andrei Tarkovsky

His final film, The Sacrifice,
ends on a long shot of a burning house
rebuilt and re-burned for take 2. Tarkovsky’s
life burns from cancer at a Paris clinic. The Soviet

Union burns at Chernobyl. The last
minute of the black and white Andrei Rublev bursts
in color for the painter’s famous icon. A group
of horses in the rain see the film off. In The Mirror,

 an earlier house burns, an earlier life. Unseen,
the protagonist drifts through scenes. How
all lives fit precisely our own, how
time slows when emotion takes hold. How
slowly his own life ends before
Soviet Union is over, with
censorship, exile, living time dancing
in his mind, all hope spilled onto screens.

If you let a film run endlessly, everyone
dies, even you. Close
your eyes. Art is born
out of an ill-designed world.

Born in Russia, A. Molotkov moved to the US in 1990 and switched to writing in English in 1993. His poetry collections are The Catalog of Broken Things, Application of Shadows and Synonyms for Silence. Published by Kenyon, Iowa, Antioch, Massachusetts, Atlanta, Bennington and Tampa Reviews, Hotel Amerika, Volt, Arts & Letters and many more, Molotkov has received various fiction and poetry awards and an Oregon Literary Fellowship. His translation of a Chekhov story was included by Knopf in their Everyman Series; his prose is represented by Laura Strachan at Strachan Lit. He co-edits The Inflectionist Review. Please visit him at AMolotkov.com.