PRICHASTIE, OR GERUNDS

By Ross Ufberg

Hamilton College

 

The ability of the Russian language to suggest the marriage of two actions

Is rather dazzling to someone from an “as”, “when”, and “which” culture;

To take gerunds and wrestle them into rhythmic syntaxes

So that they appear, to a Romantic like me, to be adjectives of acute but gentle accuracy

is something to admire at.

 

To say, for example: “The being fought in the bare brown mountains war,” or

“The young eating his vegetables slowly and with a sour face boy”;

These are very beautiful to me.

So, too, is, speaking of the exit of an artist from his studio early in the morning:

“The young with splashes of blue and red on his forearms taking a deep breath of the first air to come over the river today painter.”

I imagine this is followed by “warmed himself with thoughts of his tiny bed.”

 

But most beautiful of all is this, which I have never encountered before until now:

“The being approached by a nervous boy with pretty but all-wrong pink flowers in his hand girl,”

and then, one might add,

“touched her fingers to her neck and noticed the rapidly increasing pulse,

which she could, in no way at all, control.”