First three poems (one each)

Metronomic

‘In the morning I go down in the Metro
There my underground life runs away.’
(Valery Syutkin)

Three hundred feet below the ground,
The Circle Line goes round and round,
De-clunk de-da, de-clunk de-da,
Four syllables to every bar.
‘Dear Passengers,’ the tannoy says,
Uncomradely, though polished phrase
In regular paeonic feet
That fits the Metro rush-hour beat
Of workers paid to feed machines.
The male voice on the tannoy means
We’re ticking clockwise round the stain
Of Stalin’s coffee cup again;
An urgent metre, keeping time,
To which we nod our heads in rhyme
And mark the stress for emphasis,
Rabotniks from Metropolis,
Or clockwork soldiers on parade;
A rhythm made to be obeyed
By veterans with medalled chests,
And Moscow girls with perfect breasts,
And Moscow girls with almond eyes,
And businessmen in suits and ties,
And college kids who text and text
Between one station and the next:
I’m on the train, I’m on the train
I’m on the train, I’m on the train…


ЭК


the beautiful lie

beneath a vaulted arch that’s washed
with lime, the flaking skin of passing
time reveals old joe caught in repose.
when the earth is damp & the mould
blooms ripe, a smoking gun appears, an
unlit pipe conjoining with his roaming,
georgian nose, & not unlike pinocchio’s,
they say it grows with every pretty lie

we hear or tell, with every leap of faith
we make & every unheard prayer, each
sweet mistake, each conjured hell; it
grows like cancer’s cold farewell, the only
spell to counter it the hopeful beat, the
fragile swell of every newborn’s fontanel.


ПС


Notes from the Undermind 1

Time and the Metro love directing
their passengers towards those goals
each thinks is his. No good perfecting
your tunnelled life, good Comrade Mole,
if where your present, past and future
get linked in triple-knotted suture
is also known as, well, the grave,
and no more point in being brave
or sober, son – get stewed, go canine;
sing in the banyas, chase the ZiLs;
denounce your neighbour, neck your pills –
anything but roll round this trainline
dream in, regime out, till you die…
and then you notice: time’s a lie.

The Metro’s icons, too, deceived us:
its paradise looked down, aghast,
as sheaves of shells, not corn, bereaved us
of hope: all harvests turned at last
to that reward of shit-scared squaddies:
barns filled with rapes, mills choked with bodies –
a surplus that wiped values out,
the Motherland washed clean in gouts
of any blood, kulaks’ or killers’,
Chechyen or Georgian, Jew or Pole,
Germans galore, jammed in Death’s hole…
and Russians – always good for filler –
Russians, like kasha, gruel or bread,
Russians will always round out the dead.

Everything we place beneath is lost or
skeletal ideology –
only the Metro keeps its lustre,
by swallowing itself it says
‘Forget words' surface, vote for vowels –
all palaces are in your bowels.’
Ideologues cannot forgive
beneath belief is where we live
with mole and mandrake, salamander –
no apparachnik, no mad priest
can keep all underpants policed;
no desktop-pounding Alexander
can turn a theory into joy:
beneath belief's another Troy.


banya (баня )—bathhouse

BНХ