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This poem has posted so: This poem has posted so timely, because it dovetails into some information I just found (random browsing) on the Russian New Martyr, Elizabeth Romanov, the Czar's sister-in-law, who was a nun in the Orthodox Church, and was murdered the day after the Czar's family were executed.  Thirteen years before her death, her husband, who was also the Czar's uncle, was assassinated by a bomb that had been tossed into his carriage.  Although in deep mourning, Elizabeth visited the man who had slain her husband, assured him (the murderer) of her forgiveness, and offered to intercede with the Czar to commute the death sentence to imprisonment.  The murderer declined to accept her offer and was duly executed in the prison's small yard by a firing squad.  (I have to wonder if he avoided the customary penalty of being "strung up" without a drop, and received the quicker dispatch from several closely aimed rifles, at her behest, in order to lessen his suffering.)  She then had a steel Orthodox Crucifix erected and consecrated on the very spot where her husband had died, and on it were the words of Christ from Luke 23:34 about forgiving them who know not what they do.  After the Bolsheviks attained power, this monument so aggravated "Comrade" Lenin that he ordered a local crowd of his comrades to pull it down manually, and even came out of the Kremlin, himself, to pull on one of the ropes.  There is some evidence that Lenin feared Elizabeth Romanov even more than he had detested the Czar:  about her, Lenin said (I paraphrase) that virtue wedded to royalty was the most dangerous threat to the Revolution.  The day after the Czar's family died. Elizabeth, and another nun, and a couple of other Orthodox laity were taken to an emptied mining pit, and pushed over the side to a twenty foot fall.  Then live grenades were dropped into the pit.  When the Czarist forces came through that region attempting to rescue any surviving Romanovs (but the Bolsheviks had already butchered them), Elizabeth's body was found, examined (it was not badly decomposed), and they discovered that she did not die from the fall, or from the grenades, but from slow starvation.  According to the reports of the executioners, she had been severely beaten up by them before they tossed her to the pit.  She was canonized to Sainthood, as is only fitting, by the Orthodox Church in Russia.      Like your poem points out, so beautifully, Elizabeth found blessing in the place of mourning and pain---first, by becoming a Nun (and the Abbess of a Convent in Moscow), then by keeping her Faith firm during the execution process.  The executioners had also noted that, before the grenades were thrown in, the several people in the pit began singing Orthodox hymns, which enraged their executioners.  Elizabeth bore her cross willingly, gladly, even eagerly, because it was a source of blessing to her.  I can almost imagine her in Heaven, giving your poem a validating smile and nod.  (She and Tsarevich Alexei, who died at the age of thirteen the day before Elizabeth was dropped into the pit, are my favorite Saints among the New Martyrs, and among my most favorite Saints among all who are designated as Saints.  Reading about her yesterday, and some of her remarks, answered some difficulties I have had as a convert to Orthodoxy in a family that is coldly hostile to it.  I went to sleep in greater peace than I have had for a long time, and no longer feel the false difficulties with which the Evil One tormented me.  Now, I have read through your excellent poem, and it speaks to the same Faith and the same Blessings.      Please . . . always keep this poem posted at PostPoems.  I believe it will help readers just as much as the Evan series.  Your poem has ministered to me today, and I am very grateful to you for it.  Someday, perhaps sooner than I think, I will meet Elizabeth and Alexei in Heaven; and I will be sure to discuss your poem with them.      I believe I have edited all the typos out, and I apologize in advance if any remain.  At my age, I am a very poor keyboardist.

Thank you for the comment. : Thank you for the comment.  Being an adolescent in the seventies, I was taught that Hitler was the ultimate evil; and, while the Soviet Union was our enemy, the focus was on communism as an economic system, not as a social system.  The murders of the Romanovs (and, believe it or not, the executioners even killed Alexei's dog), the wholesale maryrdoms of countless Orthodox Christians and the maniacal destruction of their churches (one was even made a public lavatory, with toilet stalls all throughout the building), and the savage attitude of Joe Stalin toward Lenin's surviving associates (the so called Old Bolsheviks, most of whom were liquidated in the Moscow trials in the 30's)---all of these were hardly, if at all, mentioned.  When I went up to college for my first term as a freshman, I read Pasternak's Zhivago during finals week (I read it for fun, not for an assignment), and then I began to realize---only just began to realize---how horrific it was and how Lenin and Stalin sort of out-Hitlered Hitler.  I actually converted to Orthodoxy from the Baptist churches in 2014, because of the Romanovs' example.       Some years ago, I came across a suggestion from some historian (I now forget who) that Lenin's primary motive n bringing communism to Russia was not because he had an affection for the Russian people and wanted, in a misguided way, to improve their situation (and I don't question that they had it rough under the czars); but that Lenin was motivated by a need to avenge his older brother, who had been executed for trying to assassinate the previous Czar, and communism was a way to rally the Russian People to his cause so that, when empowered, he could carry out his vengeance under the guise of "Revolution."  Supposedly, Lenin---who had been raised in the Orthodox Faith---reverted to it desperately on his deathbed, and died pleading for forgiveness.         Another joke I heard was that industrialization turned Russia into one bleak, dismal, and dull landscape which featured only two colors---concrete and steel.  The joke was that if you look at pictures of Lenin's wife, Krupskaya, who was incredibly ugly, you would think he rebuilt Russian in his wife's image; or at least as an analogue to her personality.  Supposedly, after taking power, Lenin awared himself an entire floor of the Kremlin as living quarters.  His suite of rooms was in the middle of the floor; his wife's suite of rooms was on one end of the floor, and his girl friend's suite was on the other end.  After a busy day of drawing up lists of people to be executed, he had three choices on stand-by for wherever he wanted to spend his evenings.

I always appreciate your: I always appreciate your feedback. Revisiting the past, even its winter seasons, can shed new light on the present. I hope you've enjoyed what you've read so far!

Although I do not fully: Although I do not fully understand the poem's format or structure, I applaud the profound wisdom it presents, especially in that final stanza---which deserves to be in the quotation books.  Bravo!

Thanks kindly Ms Patricia.: Thanks kindly Ms Patricia. Glad you gave ear and sensibility to this poem along with the rest that are shared here and elsewhere.

Thank you.  My comments take: Thank you.  My comments take inspiration from your poems.  Plus, when commenting, I often feel like Matthew Henson putting that iron spike into the ice at the North Pole.