Three Poems
Ode to Lenin’s Overcoat
In every Russian city or town a statue of Lenin stands
on a central square with his overcoat blown back
as if by a cold wind from Siberia as he strides into the Future
with a capital “F.” And then there’s the body on display
in the Kremlin, looking like nothing so much as a diplomat
or a prosperous businessman in a dark suit,
though he planted the bomb that would blow a hole
the size of Asia in the twentieth century,
and it was said that all he cared about besides the revolution
was Beethoven and chess, the Appassionata
wringing his heart as the four beautiful grand duchesses
could not. We’ve all met those true believers
who make you glad you’re not the smartest person in the room
because you wouldn’t want to live with their hearts
thumping in your chest, especially after the mass executions,
and let’s face it, you’d be in the gulag at best
or shot against a basement wall for all your sins,
which are words all emerald and scarlet,
shimmering like cheap Christmas trash in drugstore aisles,
though they might as well be sewn into the seams
of your corset if you wore one, and maybe the czar
was out of touch, but the Bolsheviks,
Mein Gott in Himmel, or whatever it is the Russians say.
Then there was Stalin, but I’m getting ahead
of myself, as was Gogol when he wrote the ending of his story,
in which the dead clerk, who’d had his new overcoat stolen,
comes back as a spectre on a freezing night and grabs the judge
who wouldn’t help him in life, demands his fur coat,
which the judge, turning white, gives up with a scream,
jumps in his coach, and speeds away, trembling
like a toy poodle, while the dead clerk pulls the collar
around his neck, warm at last in the Arctic night.
In Gogol’s story he still haunts St. Petersberg, but it can’t be
the timid clerk, for this phantom is tall, has moustaches
and giant hands that look as if they could strangle the czar
and all his guards, send Mandelstam to his gulag
and sentence a man to death for a crime that in his dreams
he would wake from screaming like the conscript
as a bullet pierces his chest, knowing he will never hear
his mother’s voice again or have sex with his Sonya
or even eat a hot meal, the butter on a piece of black bread
dipped in soup swimming with meat and potatoes,
because he’s lying in the dirty snow crying as he had
when his father beat him until he whimpered
like a dog on the kitchen floor, his mother already there.
-
Over-the-Hill Tenors after the Opera
Being a tenor is a young man’s game, their light voices
hitting the high notes, flat bellies like shields,
because they have to slay the dragon, drink the poison, kiss
the beautiful soprano but not in St. Petersburg tonight
in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, for the tsar’s officers
are stuffed into white spandex pants, their penises
like mummified fish under the expanse of their jerkins,
and the hero Herman, who at least is in black spandex,
but when he takes off his powdered wig, his greasy hair
cannot disguise his bald pâté and his jowls,
and though he puts his all into it, there is no disguising
he is twenty years too old and forty pounds too heavy
for the role, and I think of these tenors after the opera
in an opulent bar all marble and chandeliers,
knocking back vodkas and eating silver fish swimming in oil,
because snacks become so much more important
as the years progress not to mention drinks, or what else
was Hamlet talking about in his famous soliloquy
but figuring out how to make do, slogging along on our paths,
and most of us would rather have a stiff drink
than a bare bodkin and bear our fardels, because what else
is there to do, though some go to God, bless their hearts,
as we say in the South, because the world can be a horror show
with knife-wielding lunatics behind every door,
and most of the time they seem to be people in our own families,
or why would the police look at the husband first
when a wife is strangled or a father when a child disappears?
Every day the newspaper headlines shout at us:
human beings strangle, pistol whip, run over others
in a drunken rage, and then there are the wedding
announcements, the bright shining smiles, no slammed doors
or drinks in faces yet, or maybe the tenors go home
after the opera and drink alone, gazing at framed photos
of themselves twenty years before, their jaws like granite
and eyes shining, looking beyond the camera to a future
just beyond the next room and down the street
where it’s raining now, but the sky will clear, and who’s to say
what will happen tomorrow or the day after
or when Spring comes or next year or the year after year after year.
-
The Dream of the Dacha
You are walking in a deep forest of evergreens and oaks,
leaves muffling your steps, mud soaking
your pink satin shoes. Who wears silk shoes to walk
in the woods? You do. You were at a party, drank
champagne and danced to violins, the notes soaring
like birds out of the open windows and into the summer
night, but that was hours ago, and now you are on a path,
or you think there might be a path. You see it and then you don’t,
but the moonlight comes from behind the clouds,
and its trail shimmers in the woods, and you think of mangata,
the Swedish word for the path moonlight
makes on water. Where are you? Sweden? No, Russia,
you are deep in a forest, and there are branches
you must push away, but they still tear at your dress,
almost like moonlight itself, and you hear small animals
scrabbling through the brambles on either side
of the path. In a fairy tale they would be escorts from their queen
who is waiting for you, has been waiting all your life
to show you how to crack the mirror of the present moment,
grow wings and fly into another world, a planet
where there are no doors or windows or walls,
but this is no fairy tale, and the animals have sharp teeth
that glimmer in the moon’s reflection, and there are bears,
ferocious in their brown pelts teeming with shit and gnats and flies.
Do you know what flowers are at your feet? You can’t see
the tiny white cups or yellow stars like scattered light. You
remember a poem, and you sing it as you walk,
gossiping with the stoat who is running along side you,
and when you are most lost you see a light in the distance,
or maybe not. Perhaps it’s a trick of moonlight
on the leaves or a hallucination from poisoned wine,
but your arms and legs are weightless, and you
are running now as if someone were calling to you
from the darkest part of the night. Is there a clearing
where the trees thin? Is that a cottage? Yes, oh, yes, it is,
and you knock at the door, and who answers? Your mother,
but her hair is dark, and she hasn’t forgotten how to laugh.
She heats the samovar and cuts a slice of cake
or maybe makes a sandwich of black bread and butter,
and you sweeten your tea with varenye, a soupy jam
with whole apricots swimming at the bottom of your cup,
just as you have read of in novels. Your mother shows you her garden
with its nine bean rows and tomatoes like rubies in the sun,
because it is day now, and your brother is there,
but he loves you again, and your sister is making mud pies
as she did as a girl, though she is older
and her hair is golden, and there is nothing to do all day but hunt
for blackberries and make jam or bake bread
or hike to the pool, swim, and dry off on the grass in the sun,
which is sometimes lost behind dark clouds that rumble
in the distance, and you smell the rain minutes before
it begins to fall and run back to the cottage, sit in a chair,
open a book, turn to the story of a grand estate,
a comet, a prince, and a woman who thinks
she knows her own heart but is only looking
through a window at a summer storm that might never end.
-
Barbara Hamby is the author of five books of poems, most recently On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014) published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009). She was a 2010 Guggenheim fellow in Poetry and her book of short stories, Lester Higata’s 20th Century, won the 2010 Iowa Short Fiction Award. She teaches at Florida State University where she is Distinguished University Scholar.