PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Despite materialist dialect,

the presence of an independent soul

is inconvenient, and it has shipwrecked

my Revolutionary self-control.

During my sleep, the nightly torment reaches

more deeply than Comrade Lenin's long speeches.

The People's Commisars despise mere dreams.

I am a Marxist athiest---well read

against all sorts of metaphysic power;

and yet, when strikes the subtle midnight hour,

I tremble (like a schoolboy might) with dread.

When I slumber, unable to defend,

myself from my own soul's inward intrusion,

the scene assembles itself to descend

into me like a Counter-Revolution,

unreasonable and without conclusion. 

Out of a mist, vague like a poem, loud screams

assail my ears; and then, I seem to see a

pair of eyes, saddened yet terrified;

eyes that become the full epitome

of feminine, but adolescent, beauty

eyes with a life I snuffed out---doing duty

according to Comrade Lenin's command

(determined, not a random circumstance).

And I am given, then, to understand:

though Revolutions fail, these eyes abide.

I know them from a moment's dying glance

at me that night---the Grand Duchess, Maria.

Starward

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[jlc]