Author Information
Comrade, How Is All That Working Out For You?
[after Marina Tsvetaeva's poem, "Popytka Revnosti"]
Comrade, how is all that working out for you?
You have laid the foundation of the Workers' Paradise.
You have laid the prosperous and proprietors low---
especially the Romanovs and their Churches, whom you despise.
From fertile loam, the sunflowers and birch saplings rise---
without the Central Comittee's advice or permission;
the Daystar and nights' stars enter the overhead skies
without dialectical discussion or critical revision.
Revenge is an appetie never sated, and never relents;
so much a part of your being, it does not now seem odd.
A multitude of martyrs, yet to be murdered,
still move among the masses. You will send them to God.
The pits outside Ekaterinberg and Akapayevsk are not as deep
as the need (in your stomach's pit, or your soul, or your bulbous head)---
not mentioned in the volumes of your collected works---
for ever more slaughter, to keep new state's flag more deeply red.
In you, no desire for Krupskaya---that way---existed,
so you cannot be accused or blamed that it has fled.
But, daily, and in your nights' twisted dreams the spark of truth
reminds you: from your grasp, Inessa is gone, gone and stone cold dead.
Comrade, how is that working out for you?
Do you often ask yourself, What is to be, and to do?
Starward
