Oh Russia

 

 

Russia…

I hear symphonies and underlying notes of soulful

loss and pieces of Dostoyevsky and still she lumbers forward with

Tchaikovsky attending to the beat and refuses to look far ahead

at the leader who is stomping angrily in the snow looking

for the borderline knowing this earth belongs to him

and him only…

The world cries against him which enflames him

like men in backyards throwing kerosine at their

barbecues, exerting control over hot coals,

the tanks filled with children keep moving

and shooting and the people, they say they are

not running but the baby carriages filled with

spotted dogs, babies, canned tuna and handguns

progress to the western Ukraine border. We are all

onlookers: fearful, our mouths stuck shut with cello

tape, our wrists bound, our feet shoeless,

like those forced to watch the witches hang or

the Holocaust victims fall into the graves they

were forced to dig. Some say it will be stopped

but there are some who see the spread of evil

like an ink stain on a dark blotter and one country

seeps into another taking everything and everyone

with them.