The May that Putin was crowned for the first time,
in the cathedral the Tzars had used,
and made-men of the Russian mafia,
in blacked-out SUVs, were taking their kids
to private English-medium schools,
we walked in sunshine along the Arbat,
a pedestrianised, consumer street,
once the trade route from the Kremlin to Smolensk
and the Steppes, Moscow’s main thoroughfare,
featuring in Tolstoy’s WAR AND PEACE,
and where Pushkin, with his bride, rented
a small apartment: ‘Better the illusions
that exalt us than ten thousand truths’.
We had the modern traveller’s currency
of choice, dollar bills, the lingua franca
of secure world trade. Young Muscovites,
in smart-casual attire, were queuing
outside the newly opened McDonalds.
Almost directly opposite, in the shade,
between Timberland and Shake Shack, dressed
as if for winter, a bespectacled babushka
was begging, her hand held out for kopeks.
By David Selzer