* * *

(* * *)

The chevelure of Petersburg columns –

corinthian softened by alkali –

interweave with the sleepy, smoky,

long-drawn-out, slanting rain.

Under its major remodelling,

as if by surgeon’s scalpel

after anaesthetist’s blunder,

a building passes away.

The Russian sky, that old brown cow,

still chews its cud, won’t come clean,

but red as red and mass as mass

the Bolshevik show goes on.

Row upon row parade the warheads;

the brothers Kamaz rumble and scream,

spreading behind them the gas

and stink of exhaust smerdyakov.

4 April 1996, Eugene