Russian Blue

Russia. Dostoyevsky, Trotsky and Tolstoy plotting.
Millions dead, Stalin purges and barefoot soldiers
still thawing under daffodils, vodka on their breath
starving masses behind walled-in cities, rats
and ermine, Czars and bleeding sons & daughters,
red and white
armies. Mad monks and mobs of people,
gone insane for want of a loaf of bread.
Frozen rivers and Gulags. Nikita's
pounding shoes again and communism goes
down the tubes, "We will bury you".
The worst of capitalism
accuses another false witness, bones, thugs and no
harmony, and what news of the Ukraine?
Who will haunt the ghost
of Christmas past? Who will compose
another dirge?
"Politics manipulate. Politics kill. For an artist
to be indifferent to politics is to be indifferent
to human life" Yevetushenko reads another chapter:
For Whom the Bells Toll.
The camera never blinks, the poet never cries
and history repeats itself.
"There are no little sufferings
because there are no little men."