EURYDICE AND STALIN

She crossed a bridge, and looking down she saw

The little Georgian boiling in a trench of blood.

He hailed her, and holding up his one good arm

He opened his palm to show her two pulpy seeds

Like droplets—one for each time she lost her life.

Then in a taunting voice he chanted some verses.

Poetry was popular in Hell, the shades

Recited lines they had memorized—forgetful

Even of who they were, but famished for life.

And who was she? The little scoundrel below her

Opened his palm again to show that the seeds

Had multiplied, there was one for every month

He held her child hostage, or each false poem

He extorted from her. He smiled a curse and gestured

As though to offer her a quenching berry.

On certain pages of her printed books

She had glued new handwritten poems to cover

The ones she was ashamed of: now could he want

Credit as her patron, for those thickened pages?

He said she was the canary he had blinded

To make it sing. Her courage, so much birdseed.

Shame, endless revision, inexhaustible art:

The hunchback loves his hump. She crossed the bridge

And wandered across a field of steaming ashes.

Was it a government or an impassioned mob

That tore some poet to pieces? She struggled to recall

The name, and was it herself, a radiant O.