Russian Garden Gazette

Arseny Tarkovsky wrote about gardens the way people write about childhood: as a place you can describe exactly and still never return to. Two of his poems belong to the end of a summer.

White Day, 1942

A stone by the jasmine, a father on the path, a garden in full flower — and the flat statement that he was never happier than then. The poem ends by refusing its own consolation: you cannot go back there, and you cannot tell it.

And Summer Is Gone, 1967

Five stanzas, each closing on the same four words. Everything the poem lists is good — warmth, luck, a life that sheltered him, a day washed clean as glass. And each time, in answer: it is not enough.

There is a particular reason these lines matter to film as well as to poetry. In Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky gave his father’s verse to the screen — the poems are read aloud in the film. A son directing his father’s words is its own comment on memory and inheritance.

A different August altogether: ironic, worn out, unsentimental. Where Tarkovsky remembers a paradise he cannot re-enter, Brodsky is simply done with the season. The title alone carries the mood.

I’m Not Quite Losing My Mind, But I’m Tired of Summer

We are glad to share a milestone in the life of our organization. The Russian Cultural Garden has opened its own Investment Fund.

Over the years we have carried out many memorable projects, but to look to the future with confidence we needed a solid financial foundation. This fund is built so that the money given to it is not spent at once. It is invested, and the income it earns is directed each year to the Garden’s long-term programs.

That means your support now becomes permanent capital. In launching the fund, we are building a stable future for Russian culture and for this shared space of ours.

What changes in practice: a gift no longer has to be money for a particular occasion. Stock and other financial instruments can now be given. And a family can put its own name on a fund and direct it to what matters most to them: youth programs, stipends for young musicians, a project they would like to see continue.

If your family has been thinking about this, we would be glad to talk. Write to us at board@russiangarden.org.

One of Cleveland’s oldest neighborhood traditions returns August 13–16. Since 1898, Holy Rosary Church and Cleveland’s Little Italy have celebrated the Feast of the Assumption — four days of faith, food, music, procession and community. On August 15, after the solemn Mass, the traditional procession moves through the streets of Little Italy.

More than a festival, the Feast is a fine example of how Cleveland’s immigrant communities turned cultural memory into living local tradition — something very close to the spirit of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens.