To The Commissar Of Gulags: Comrade . . .

You thought your talents led to artistry;

but Comrade Stalin's fictive fantasy

led you into the stern bureaucracy's

control of all these prisoners' destinies;

of whom each one obstinately denies

the truth (that they call Comrade Lenin's lies)

about the rising Workers' Paradise.

Your vast political experience---

you think---will help them make a better sense

of the great Soviet Socialist State

and help them (so much better) to relate

to what they once failed to appreciate.

Your pamphlets will replace "them Poets'" books,

as you cast for your prey with bent fishhooks,

and rusted barbs that you masterly bait.

For joy you write for them, though poorly paid;

except, for reasons that you think unknown,

you cannot, even with a plea, get laid;

your life will someday sputter out alone.

You will be just as dead as any Czar

or old Bolshevik the Party has expelled.

You will rot underneath a bright red Star---

Algol---beneath which your life's tree was felled.


J-Called

[*/+/^]

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