PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

"Socialist realism---the inspiration of the People,
"and a building block of the Communist State!"

---attributed to Maxim Gorky, in his unpublished

poem, "Who Welded The Idled Peoples Together?
"Him:  A Hymn To Comrade Lenin"

A commisar's assistant deputy,

who, early, had abandoned poetry,

he flung his words without much artistry

into small pamphelets with politically

charged titles, like "People's Economy---

"The Locomotive Of All History"

(his comments on the theories of Karl Marx

lack's truth's flame, and sputter like dying sparks).

Accused of lacking zeal's sincerity

(most certainly a rather "trumped-up" charge,"

he floated, like some unmoored Volga barge,

right into one of Moscow's first show trials,

found guilty, mostly, of what others said

about him (although he made fierce denials).

The flimsy case the Prosecutor built (he

guessed at much) still brought in the verdict, Guilty

(according to observers' expectation).

Despite his statement of profound repentence

for errors he had never realized

before; and promised rehabilitation,

no one was really very much surprised

how quickly "People's" Judges pronounced sentence.

From his life, set the ominous Red Star.

That very night, the climax of his dread,

a deputy assistant commisar

(with helpers) led him from his narrow cell,

out past the prison, near a czarist well

long dry (although it once filled with profusion).

"Thus to our foes:  long live the Revolution"

he heard; but not the single, well-aimed shot

at point blank range that drilled right through his head,

as he fell forward on to a junk pile's

debris---food scraps and shards of some clay pot.

Starward