Love in a Far Away Land

He fell in love in Lviv.
I knew it as Lemberg,
site of a thousand tales
from an old book
I read as a girl.

He walked down streets
of old Ukrainian city, resonant
with history, unchanged,
unlike bland Soviet
architecture that had
erased the glories
of so many
old places.

He fell in love in Lviv,
and I don't know the season,
but it had to have been
romantic in film noir ways,
turn of head,
lift of jaw,
eyes meeting eyes,
the first kiss.

Ah, were they inside?
Inside old hotel room
redolent of history, with
chandeliers and faded velvet drapes?

Or perhaps
outdoors, in a park,
in green springtime
or in shining snow of winter,
perhaps in front of stately
and beautiful cathedral.

No matter, he fell in love in Lviv,
a city I read of as Lemberg,
many things happened there,
and love, ah no doubt, love, too.