LENIN: AN INTIMATE TOMBSIDE CHAT, AFTER THE FALL

LENIN: AN INTIMATE TOMBSIDE CHAT, AFTER THE FALL

At first I was confused but at last I can sleep after all those years
of frenzied droning. Lost bees, to the hive, they came and came…
Yes. The chemical baths are quite soothing …  October. Das Kapital.
No, red was never my favorite word, prikrasnaya was. The thaw
came early that year; Russia taught Napoleon a thing or two about mud!

I am truly sorry. I had no idea… Kiev’s ravine of  shame, the Bibi Yar…
When they changed my name it was hard to get the ink to flow,
but once in the blood…  I always wanted to be a poet among the birches.
They should have just left it Petrsburg. I’m not a city, I’m an institution!
For the record, I was never against the Window to the West.

How I long for a plate of varenyekii y smetana, a glass of pepper vodka.
To see again those ripe fields of wheat, the blue-eyed cornflowers.
A young pioneer once gave me her most prized possession
and I lost it. Indifference, I guess. Socialism was my bride.
I heard something about that hooligan landing in Red Square.

Really? The moon? A cosmonaut couldn’t possibly live three months in space!
They abandoned him? Yes, I know the feeling well. Star Wars?? Nyeh puni mayu.
Tak … Whatever happened to Karl and Feliks? Poor Trotsky in Mexico—
They say the assassin used an axe; was he a good Ukrainian kossak?
Did I tell you about my mausoleum; the red granite is from Cherkassy Oblast.

No I’m not familiar with Yeltsyn’s stance; like a pine tree. We’ll see.
The other vorona’s name meant strong as steel but he was a mean sparrow.
Whatever happened to my little blackbird, Gorbachev?
The things I hear when the crypt is empty—the guards talk of politics,
their bosses, wives, the vodka and bread lines; always shortages.

Tak, I’d love to get my hands on a copy of Pravda.
You know journalism was my first love, the smell of ink,
the clatter of presses, the truth in black and white for the world to see…
I always thought we’d free the masses. The revolution did not fail!
That’s where Stalin went wrong. Not everyone has the vision… or the means.

Winter is best; the ground is hard as rock. Political thaws are treacherous.
Yosef should have known better than to rule forever like a Tsar.
Of course they loved him, it was a cult. He was a vain man, a cruel father.
I’d given my eye teeth to see Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the table.
Yes, well, Breszhnev dozed off in here too; ochin starray like your Reagan.

St. Basil’s? Yes, Ivan the Terrible… Tak. This country’s full of silly rumors.
I’d love to see Peter’burg again in the fall. I miss the parades, the banners lufting—
I can’t see, but I can still hear. It’s so quiet now. These four walls, my Lyubianka …
Yes. No. That’s not true. I had considered stepping down; they wouldn’t let me …
In the end I too, was a prisoner, nothing more than an opiate for the masses.

We have a saying: Without a storm there can be no romance.
Spaceba for our little chat, I have so few visitors these days.
But the spruces outside my tomb are learning to speak;
I hear their branches whispering to the wind.

9/11/93        

there's a revised version, damned if I know where it is

Prikrasnaya/ beautiful, (krasnaya/ red);
Bibi Yar/ the ravine where Stalin secretly slaughtered Jews;
varenyekii y smetana/ dumplings & sour cream;
Nyeh puni mayu/ I don’t understand; tak/ so, well;
Oblast/ region;
vorona/ a crow (=black sheep);
sparrows were Stalin’s special informers,
Gorbachev/ blackbird, he was Lenin’s student;
Pravda/ truth;
ochin starray/ very old;
Tak/ an exclamation, like So
Lyubianka/ KGB interrogation prison in Moscow;
spaceba/ thank you.