You ask for poetry?
Then I will not give you lyric abstractions!
Because they are lifeless.
Like the Romanovs. A dynasty. A concept.
Dead, buried, worn out, like their divine autocracy.
Instead I give you girls and a boy, women, men and a tsarʲ -
shivering under the weight
of a melting crown of ice.
Melting into a puddle of filthy slush
soon to be stained by drops of blood
krásnaya kommunist kommunion krovʲ
Killers, you people of killers, you killers of people.
You killers of a people.
This world is a material word.
Said material girl. Quoting Marx.
Look at the Word Game (Игра в слова)
which the irreverant bear started.
Nothing but nouns!
Concrete nouns.
To hold onto on the ice rink of the world.
Where the ballerinas skate.
Crashing into each other,
blinded by their obscure abstractions.
Edith Södergran sits ringside
petting a cat in her lap
and laughs her contemporary
grand duchesseses' Carelian
summer laugh,
like when Anastasia
no - isn't being mischievous
what an abstract aberration!
that's sooo Olga
but, when Tatiana isn't looking
throws a slimy frog at
Maria reading
Grimm's Le roi grenouille
for the lesson of monsieur Gilliard
secretly eyeing the handsome hockey hunks
on the frozen pond.
