THE MUSEUM ISSUE Katherine E. Young   Lermontov's Room The hollow heart beats evenly. — Mikhail Lermontov He himself hurried along this hall, up breakneck stairs, down that corridor, boot heels clack-clacking to the rat-tat-tat of mémère’s disapproval. Same old story, the old and young: he won’t amount to much if he doesn’t shape up, she just can’t seem to understand what real life is about… His room is perched atop the house, an aerie seemingly conjured from November’s sullen clouds. A poet’s place—Pushkin above the desk—the peaks of the Caucasus engraved, fantastic—leather-bound Byrons, Schillers, and Chéniers spilling across the shelves. Ask the old woman who sits by the door and she’ll recite his verses, rocking gently with the rhythms, thinking back to days at school, when it had seemed to her just the most poetic thing, to die young. Katherine E. Young's chapbook, Gentling the Bones, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2007; a second chapbook, Van Gogh in Moscow, is forthcoming from Pudding House Press. Individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, The Iowa Review, and Shenandoah.   Published in Volume 10, Number 1, Winter 2009.   Read more by this author: Katherine E. Young: Evolving City Issue