1.

Because I watched it first with M, in winter,
in scarves and gloves, like students out of Chekhov,
in the Soviet cold of our unradiated
digs, in dark the TV interrupted,
I knew my held breath when I couldn’t see it.
Any moment anything could happen.

2.

Nothing does. But every time it seems
to happen less. For years, I used to fret
about the poet and the scientist
who reach the wishing room, debate Big Themes,
and go back empty-handed. Knew that feeling.
If I could wish for anything I wouldn’t.

3.

A thing worth doing is a thing worth doing
more than once. Not everything develops.
The first year’s worth of reels, for instance, didn’t.
And then they shot the whole damn thing again.
And then they shot the whole damn thing again.
Three times. Sixteen thousand feet of film.

4.

A lush, abandoned landscape. I remember:
green plants; snow in summer; snow the texture
of foam; foam lapping the doglapped river
he lies beside, midway through the journey;
the bolts he ties to bits of string and throws
to check reality is working; beauty.

5.

The river is the Jägala, Estonia.
Vladimir Sharun, the sound designer,
is on record saying that the runoff
from one of several powerplants upriver
gave both his friends, the leading actor Tolya
and their director cancer. Snow in summer.

6.

Desperately, morbidly hungover,
L asked me for my favourite comfort viewing,
and missing the point completely I said Сталкер,
just for the moment when he leaves the city
and suddenly everything is technicolour.
I know that feeling, too, the sudden colour.

7.

In the book of the film he finds a thing to wish for.
HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE
OF CHARGE, AND MAY NO ONE BE LEFT BEHIND!
In the book of the film his daughter can no longer read.
In the film’s last scene we see her reading.
In the book that she holds in her hands she reads a poem:

8.

Darling, I love your eyes, the quick,
mischievous flame that flashes
when they rise to catch a word
or name. It fills the wide room.
Your lightning makes the sky’s
own arrows look slow, look tame.

But I prefer a private fire, a darker
glow. This heat behind your low,
barred lashes, when each bright
light narrows and drops, kindling
a kiss. Where they meet, I see,
below love’s ashes, soft embers of desire.

                                                                                                   – after Fyodor Tyutchev