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Inside Joe Stalin's Office In The Kremlin, In Moscow, Circa 1937
Joe Stalin called Pasternak
"cloud-dweller": this appellation
that saved him from a stretch on the rack
suggests the Poet could, from his perch,
see the sky displayed in constellation
(as beneath it the Soviet State practiced its menacing lurch).
And Uncle Joe, surrounded by bloodied and dingy shrouds,
and by bullet-pierced heads he collected and preserved in jars
could not look from them to see, through those same clouds,
the grandeur of the stars.
Starward-Led
