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(In memory of Moscow 96, of Andrei, Valentina, Sascha,
Tanya…Muscovite.After the fall-I thank you for your
friendships, your sad kindness, and your courage.N.M.)
Primo tempo
Woof! Woof! Woof. It all began, at midnight
This nightmare began. Like “krani,kranski
krasogni’ coming from lips of Lenin, lying
there stiff as cardboard
Learn! Learn! Learn! He says.
What are we to learn from
Him? Failed lawyer after 70 years still stiff
Dead at 55, but eternally young deflated
Like a balloon,
Just another mummified corpse in the
Heart of the Kremlin, in the heart of Moscow the
Heart of mother Russia, inside a crystal tomb.
What are we to learn?
From another mummy, a cadaver of wax
and lipstick formaldehyde and desiccated flesh!
Oh mother Russia, it all sounds more like
krasni! krasni!krasni! From him?
“krani,kranski,krasogni!”
Your bell does not ring anymore.
It lies in rotting meat…
its chunks polished to gold by touching
perfection.
Oh Lenin! Corpse.
And rubbing and kissing and holding
Trying to warm the dead still
Burning body
Of a long dead soldier,
A long dead man,
In a long dead country…
In a dark suit. In uniforms…
We walk in circles, Tanya, Valentin & I
Walking giant circles in Red Square, inferno-like
The sound of thousands of feet kicking
cans here and there of russo-american rock and roll
& Empty bottles, & a rattle and eerie
Cacophony of marching feet, of faces,
rumpled grey&red, pants shoes brass
buttons an army of Humanity marching forward to the end
In this bitter… cold world.
A brass band plays on. Um Pa Pa! Um Pa.
Pa!
My translator Sasha jokes with me- “Do you think
They kept his prick? Do you believe it will
Rise?” – Lenin’s brain he ex
By Science sliced into thin transparent slices
Preserved for the future when Science
Would someday understand what made Lenin great.
What about his prick, has it been sliced
too?
“I love Russia!”He shouts
“I love Mother Russia!”I cant anything
Hear from the roar.
Lenin! Corpse!
Genius, founder of a nation of saints
&Drunkards, of Poets who always hang themselves
In winter! Of statues in the parks, Lenin! Corpse!
Frozen stiff cardboard phallus under the
Bored stare of the uniformed
Guards, “Silence!” one of them cries
The honor guard is gone forever
Silence! Do not whisper!
Respect!
Respect!
Cant you see the man is sleeping!
So many years after the revolution
That would shake the world, Lenin sleeps on
Where nothing would be changed we re-enact
Another revolution
Through all the endless centuries of revolutions
Of angel men who slept
On frozen stone prison floors
Wet with blood…that never slept again.
For what? I think…he sleeps…
“Do I change? Did I change? Did we change?”
I offer Valentina a small green bottle
Of cheap Georgian champagne I got for my birthday.
To celebrate something…she weeps…offers herself.
I start to feel old, to mummify like
Vladimir, just another aging American
tourist, asking stupid questions.
Now that you’ve
Left your worthless carapace here on earth
Was it worth it?
Were you 666?” like they said?
Or was it that other one
That priest from Georgia
Who loved his country again all too well?
Lenin!Valdimir lliych Lenin!”Corpse!
In a crowd of Thugs and Hoodlums, we
mingle about
”I love this Country
I love Russia,” he is drunk, there among
the firs among those
Vested thugs inside German
Cars former KGB men all & the smoke
sellers
Selling single smokes,
Filthy key-chains, old postcards,
A limp pickle, a half bottle of Coca-Cola.
Did you change anything comrades?
Bistro! Bistro! Mushu! Mushu! Like those
starving Napoleonic beggars! Does
anything really change History comrades?
Revolution is dead at 14, not 65- a tiny
hero’s grave
In Mother Russia’s bosomed-out heart
Buried by the Kremlin pines outside the
highest wall
Sitting waiting to rise again, a mere child.
Poor Kid.
A whisp of smoke that curls and
dissolves into the bluish air…
I write and write and write
Learn, & learn & learn
What do I learn? What do I write?
“Woof, woof, woof!”
By Kremlin wall I look down
Towards the bottom of a hill.
And to the end of the World I weep.
What do we learn from this the soft even
Summer snows? From these fluffs that
Hurricanoe about the soft early spring
Night, like ghostly snows? Memories of
winter…
\What do we learn?
Secondo tempo
In bright hot
Sunlight Micha draws 666 on the tank
Dashboard of his Lada, “that’s who
Stalin was” he screams “he ate us, alive
and raw, like herring!”&
Slits his throat, he has a broken voice he
gestures and laughs his broken mouth
almost toothless I see children sit on the
lap of Tolstoi’s giant behind his massive
shoulders
Stone statue in the park, playing as
children
Play making a slide of him.
Oh Little father.Stalin.Where is Stalin?
Where did they hide him?
“Nothing works here in Russia” Tanya
says,”Everything does and everything
does not work cant you see it then? then
you won’t above all…because…
We dont work!” & Micha wont leave his
car parked for long in case someone
steals it
Why did you bother dying anyway
Valdimir?
What was your point? What a waste!
What???
Why bother with death, little father comrade?
Why did you
Bother us, teaching us how to die?”
Learn! Learn! Learn!
So young.
Bistro! Bistro! Mushu Mushsu!
Learn learn learn…
At 44, Andrea is tall
And lean, intelligent and kind, a
biochemist
She works selling shoes…
But I watch her heart break daily from the
news
The thugs run the show…she says
“Now what was the point of all that
learning you ask?”You tell me, my so
serioso American friend? We sit in her
kitchen smoking imported Dutch
cigarettes. After dinner, What was that
about? That all men are equal?
They’re not! History proves that one! She smokes
A little cheroot cigar, blowing it my face..
“Now that the thugs rule the roost, these
young thoatslitters!”And sings into me,
into me…
Boastful cowboys in leather jeans,
indecent men with rollex watches walk
by, drive by, on Old Arbreut Square.
And bank accounts in Switzerland, with
suitcases full of gold & American money,
they line up at night at the all night red-
carpeted banks,
Flashing neon lights like a strip bar, their
lit up smiles…”they dont know whats real
anymore, they’ve lost it! They don’t
understand anything about history!”
“Soon they will all be lined up and shot! -
All of them. Each and every single one!”
Now not even in the cheapest restaurants
Andreyev & his wife attend, full of herring
and bottled beets…
Every Friday night can they afford to
sit.even for a second…
“ These thugs eat and guzzle everything
Champagne and caviar everything is
consumed, while we. (. Were you would
have had intellectuals once upon a time).
Artists are drinking tea without sugar,
biochemists, doctors, politburo, and
scientific men, men of substance now
these are the human trash and we sweep
the streets! Mr. Gotbachov! This wall
must come down…! Mr Gorbachov, look
what you did!!!”Mr Gorby this wall must
fall down.. Like Humpty Dumpty
And came down it did… to this.. my ass!
Perestroika, my hairy ass!”
And now these…
These 4 legged animals hairy thugs
in English leather
Bullet headed bullet-men, like bulldogs
Brushed in bullet proof black Mercedes
pull over to the side
Dragging American girls into their cars
Yelling at them, slapping the whores
down fearing nothing! And no-
one.shooting each other on the streets of
Moscow for good measure…
“ Lets Get it on” Lets dance and play!
Give us a good fuck eh!”
Terzo tempo
With Andrei I walk past Tolstoy’s house
and back
Past the old sugar factories from the
1880’s and the golden spired churches,
We walk his dog again at night, after
midnight, I pretending that I’m dreaming
thinking of Gurdjeff, Stanislavski, Tolstoi,
Tchaikovsky …I pretend this was once
my city, these people once my people, my
history.. That awful winter in Leningrad..
And we talk the night away, converse in
philosophy
When we sit by little park next to the the
mental hospital, Andrei tells me about his
mother during the war, during the seige
“She was a doctor and everyday she
braved the shelling to go to the hospital
and work, without medecine, bandages,
food-she worked, braving the pock-
marked streets…”
We talk only of God..
And about the future of the world,
Of the earth.”How do you remember God
so well?”
I ask him. He replies –“ Some things
Cant be forgotten ever, not even if they
are converted and covered up
With swimming pools and gymnasio’s!
Not even if they are pickled in
formaldeyde….
You want to see the earth but you cant
stand it!
Its smell,the smell of it, its
Cinders! Everywhere, the smell of dead
soldiers
Burnt bodies, like rancid milk, spoiled
Rotten mummified flesh is everywhere!
Decomposing
Beneath these Streets of Pain.
I see cardboard coffins, at night, float in
the air
Among those
Ghostly fluffs that disappear & re-appear
and they float
Above and beyond our tenements, past
Tolsoi’s white picketed house.. Above the
city, brushing the flowering streets, grey
rectangular u.f.o-like as we sit, sipping
tea& vodka, on the rooftops..
In between the golden spires of the
Glinting churches filled
With bearded icons faces of the Moscow
River, frozen, it seems
Forever even in its summer’s
Flat, discarded with unspecific intent,
unspecified bridges, not only these
maps, but more, put past the straight
down subways, to miles beneath the
sheltering metallic sky..
How in heavens name did they do it I
think, survive!? Hitler and Napoleon, Ivan
and Stalin…how? How? How did they do
it?
“Bridges,” Tanya says, “is how we
survive! -The bridges that separate the
sky from earth, water from land, that slice up the day from night and death even from life itself!”
Pontifex! Pontifex! Even now the bridges
are taking me to the old sites“Look at
this! This is the brand-new hotel that
Clinton, your president
Stayed in!” she says” this is the KGB
building
With this, it is, the Foreign Ministry
Of Sports &Actors! Marcello Mastroianni
came here once, after “La Dolce Vita” &
he was kissed full on, with a mouthful of
vodka by out greatest Russian Actor..
And patted and told..You’re a good actor
son, but not so great…ha ha ha..
Good but not so great!!!”
I wanted to say to her
To say “excuse me I… I am not
A foreign delegation of foreign men! I am
human!
I don’t want want trade negotiations, I
don’t want women Or butter, borcht,
klieb, black bread, or bolts, tanks,
missiles, submarines, dams or
hydrolectric power, thanks but no thanks
spasibo, spasibo, spasibo
Harasho harasho harasho
All I want here to do here is to see and
learn! To understand. To learn.
I want to understand this… sad place..
In this … sad and funny World…”
Sacha laughs and rolls out laughter like
steel ballbearings, millions, exploding
across the Neva, shooting out.. Millions
of them across Kremlin Square and then
up to the World, past the Viet-Cong
monument …sudden like.
Quarto tempo
Til Stalin listens. Sits up.
It all sounds like cabbage, cabbage
Cabbage in my head, “we have to protect
Ourselves from these new Volga
boatmen! Stalin shouts, mummified, dirt
dribbling from his moustache, these new
Vikings of today! If we are to survive! New
Russia! The hell with that. Shoot them
all!”
Novo-Ruskis! What are they? The same
swine in sheeps clothing! Shoot them!
Shoot them. Before its too late!”
Micha gets me there by speeding
escorted cabs just shy
On time before
Gypsies who have lived on so many
centuries on, in so many ways.. They
have so much to teach us I think. Of life.
I see Tanya brushing her skirt…making
herself presentable. I ask her to
accompany us.
“The gangsters make 250,000 in just one
day! Rajic tells me, his moustache soaks
more than speech.. he looks strangely
familiar…
“The ghosts still appear and float in
broad daylight
Where the killings happened!” He tells
me. He knows everything.where the
bodies are buried.
And looks at his life like strange mirrors
of the Winterpalace’broken
Hermitage.
From Life itself he has no fear.
He tells me that in Kiev, at the top of a
mountain of Jewish corpses a state pool
was built and collapsed and beneath its
massive concrete.. The rotting bodies of
thousands of massacred Jews…
emerged like living winged worms..
Outside when we see Solzenhystsen and
his wife
Parade like painted strollers beaten by
the simple truth of a curving river
When we see them dance inside the
Czars old park like L’apres-midi d’un faun
he shouts out
“ O those stupid Viennese waltzes!” And
smirks. And talks about getting them
alone in an alleyway…to teach them a
thing or too about dancing
When we watch them dance the night
away reflected in all those silvered
mirrors….. At the
Edge of my eyes… his eyes, like
powdered marbles fall and clatter and he
just laughs and laughs…and turns
away….
Il quinto tempo
I live in Moscow on a street named
Grigarin
First Cosmonaut in space in an
apartment, back when the world was big
its
Owned by a commander of the
First soviet nuclear submarine..
I sit and eat left-overs covered in warming
blankets..
“What would like to eat for breakfast,
amerikanski?” Valentina asks
“Eggs” I reply. And get cod-fish heads
preserved in oil.
“Moscova is out of eggs..” she
shrugs..”And hot water.. What else”She
shrugs her shoulders.. What else is new?
The state subsidizes the hot water for all
of Moscow, centralized heating…whats to
be expected??You pay in American
dollars in one month
All my salary for 2 years…
“Before the fall…I was lawyer…lawyer-
manager in the Ukraine
Of a factory, of 20.000 loyal workers.
Then the Fall.The stupid fall. Fliiit! Fuut!
Perestroika! Gorbachov that Fool!
Now…nothing…I come to Moscow to
work as maid.
My daughter is a dottoressa…at 40
dollars a month..
Macdonalds is 100 hundred American
dollars…to eat
The American way”
I sleep…. Across from an old mansion,
highwalled, gated
Watched over at night by dogs I hear
these dogs bark woof...an old Czarist
palace
That had once housed the KGB
It almost burned down one night
Oh signs of paucity at the steps taken! Oh
Life
At dawn! In the morning I move in bluish
glue.
At night while I sleep.. I hear woof! Woof!
Woof!
Vlada weeps in the park for her thin
bones
Barking silence and in the smell of cat
urine
She remembers the new leaves, misses
them again, she tells Me.. Gangsters
Skip bullets at her she tells me
She speaks from her many mouths
Fuming, fountains of colourful exits
From her tiny untouched
Breasts, she is naked.. Her first patents
are expulsed, with dark streaks..
In a small handkerchief of blood, she is
afraid of losses,
To talk to us, to me, for fear of reprisal
from her bosses, or her bosses boss- he
feels her up behind the counter.. He may
want her all to himself.
We all have it so fucking easy we
Americans!
I step drunk on the way to work and
watch
Packs of wild dogs run through the unlit
offices, the hallways hold rats and broken
glass and other drunks asleep in filth! Her
name she tells me means dome-of-art,
state of truth, commiseriat of people love
Sewing the brocaded sleeves, there was
once a famous Vlada I forget who she
tells me
And from her
Loins she will burst the she men that will
Con
And in her silent rage she
Will eat all the Ages
That we live thru!
Vlada weeps & breaks my heart
Her mother barks at her
In thin whisps of furry sweet-voice
At night, after midnight
On the phone she now
Lives with her in one room she pleads
with me
To call
But gives up after 12 rings
Sharing the apartment with 5 strangers
and a stepfather
& When I leave Moscow she weeps &
Never says a word again to me again
We
Only exchanged glances I remember
And then I kissed
Her that one time on the mouth at the
doorframe saying goodbye
Forever….
Lenin!
Corpse!
“Now I am not Gods or God like ordinary
man
In a frame of tender flesh that hurts each
day
What do I have to offer her and not to
take
At each and every turn of night?”
Lenin! Corpse! Tell me!
I ask you Comrad how shall we free this
soul
From these leaden bonds, with what
perpetual peterpaul prison
Can we hold us then
Above these re-glitterized floods! These
Gold-domed spires! These soldiered
cappellas of want
Of need! These old rifles!, and of broken
bells
Of desire, of desire…of mushu mushu!
Moscow sits at night in shivers, on a
blanket of
Tiny shoots.. Of clear & white sparkling
dust, blood melts
And drips on
Snowflakes in a white
Winters night
And here where her trams rattle, the
bridges that hold her
Steady beneath my feet, the distant
thumps of the
Subway remind me once again
Of other thumps!,
Thump!, thump!, the thump of war!
But we are protected now from thumps
But thumps are everywhere!
Like a hand stabbing
At its own fingers..
My driver Rajic pulls his Lada
Over& laughs his Moslem
Laugh, when he hears me speak…
“What do you know, you know nothing,
americaski, of life or death…”
Eating lamb with shredded teeth and
mouth
And writing again with his fingers…6…
6…6…. Don’t you get it?” he signals and
winks, a Stalin smile for me again
And laughs again deeper in that bass
drum voice, deeper
Tha
Deeper even than all the knives wounding
for
“Lenin was the Beast…!”
“ I wanted to run out and shout out
The turreted thorny Martian spires of
these
Tall copied metropolis- “stop it!” stop to
all the
Skyripping skyscrapers!! Atop which sits
A five pointed Pentacled Star!!
Of the dead Soviet
Nation! Stop it! Stop it! But no-one stops
the roll of History. We must learn learn
learn!
“We are not even small gods in this world
We are not even men compared to you!
Even our lives
Are miniscule, dwarfed in comparison
To the size of your longing sadness!”
These are but our out- organed needs.
Why shouldn’t
We have needs? We’re only human ants!”
We are tiny Lilliputian rafters
On the currents of the warm human
stores
That flow within, electrically
Filled up now with artificial blood green
and blue
For we are dog and dogmeat both, bark
and woofer
Scratched terrier and pointy leoparddog
and bone-digger too!
The last night I was in Moscow I drempt I
returned to that
Horrid Square & walked & sat and I felt
that sadness
Of sweet
Repose, there by St Basils where we all
sat and wept
With
Sasha and Valetina, And Andrei too, and
Tanya
&Little Vlada & together we as friends we
walked
Marching to that oblong box inside
That under sea of cold & blue crystal
And beneath a pyramid of tears
We found him sitting still
With a glass of tea and sugar between
His teeth
& Under a fleeting sky we shuddered
In recoil
When he turned one preserved eye
Towards us..
“Vladimir-Illyich Wake up please,
Soon a stone colddawn will break!
”Vladimir-Illyich wake up! Please”
And that frozen corpse
Winked to us and said
“ Now, now comrades what have you
learned, what have you really learned???
I’m awake. I’m always awake
This nightmare is real “
And in unison we all replied:
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
MOSCOW DOG/
Started 96/re-write2002
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