This period was in many ways a turning point for me. On a honeymoon, under ominous circumstances, my brother died along with his young wife. There is no need to remind us of the general crisis. A little later, some of the texts presented here were selected by editor O. Ermolaeva for publication in the magazine "Znamya". That publication never took place, and I considered those poems of mine lost until, by a lucky chance, I recently discovered a copy of them. Natalia Dudina’s painting “Ecological Suffering” was used for the cover design.