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Issue 2 Poetry poetry

Learning to Speak

Learning a new language at fifty
is like learning ballet at seventy.
I love the music of new words
the dance of new thoughts,
a drumbeat of names:
Pevek and Anadyr, Roytan and Wrangel,
Larisa, Volodya, Valya and Slava,
Pyotr, Victor, Ludi, Villi, Yuri.
I want to come back to the north
and talk with you about polar bears,
and the ice floes, about icebreakers,
and the long night,
and the flowers on the tundra,
about where you came from
and where you are going,
and if the arctic will still be white
when our children have children.