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veterans

AT LENIN’S TOMB

We joined the queue one warm afternoon two days

before Victory Day, and the week Putin

was first crowned. There were police everywhere –

mostly, it seemed, armed thirteen year olds

in wide-brimmed caps. One halted the queue

to allow a group of be-medalled,

self-conscious veterans to enter first.

Inside, we were ‘forbidden to smoke, talk, photograph,

video, or have your hands in your pockets’.

 

Exiled to the conifer forests

of Central Siberia with its gnat

legions of summer, its winter numbing,

he took his pseudonym then soubriquet

from the river Lena, its waters

replete with minerals and mammoth tusks.

 

Curious the great revolutionary

with that questioning, directing look  –

who found sleep elusive so studied French

grammar books to send him to the Land of Nod –

through no choice of his own, preserved like a

waxwork or a shaman!

 

 

 

ALIASES

The Lenin Statue, the new FSB (aka Cheka, NKVD, KGB) HQ  and a new church supported, in part, by Mars pet foods. ©SCES 2000
The Lenin Statue, the new FSB (aka Cheka, NKVD, KGB) HQ and a new church supported, in part, by Mars pet foods. ©SCES 2000



We remembered the newsreels with Uncle Joe

aka Koba the only one in grey,

so expected a black and white city.

But the colours astound us, beguile.

From our apartment – which used to be bugged –

we overlook what used to be October Square.

The monumental bronze statue –  of Lenin, V.I.,

with assorted comrade soldiers and sailors set to march,

by Gorky Park, over the Crimea Bridge,

toward the Kremlin – is intact.

In May, parties of veterans queue to see Lenin

(erstwhile Ulyanov, V.I.) preserved.

Behind the Mausoleum, in the garden

of remembrance, is a bust of Stalin

(erstwhile Djugashvili, J.V.). Always,

fresh roses surround it. However,

in the Sculpture Park, the Great Helmsman,

in red granite, has had his nose knocked off.

Putin (sic), V.V. is crowned in the Tzar’s Cathedral,

the Annunciation.  The double-headed eagle flies.

Like his forebears, he takes the salute in Red Square.

They are all dressed up in the uniforms

of the Great Patriotic War – and the troops

(not a tenor  amongst them) greet their  little C in C

with the time dishonoured and oh

so genuinely moving: “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!”

Sometimes, that spring, when we opened the windows,

we thought we smelled tundra, sea and ice.

Opposite the Lenin statue, outside the Metro,

an elderly woman, in a worn, quilted coat,

sold wild hyacinths. We did not understand

the price.  She fluttered her hand above her heart.