The Lenin Statue, the new FSB (aka Cheka, NKVD, KGB) HQ and a new church supported, in part, by Mars pet foods. ©SCES 2000

We remembered the newsreels with Uncle Joe

aka Koba the only one in grey,

so expected a black and white city.

But the colours astound us, beguile.

From our apartment – which used to be bugged -

we overlook what used to be October Square.

The monumental bronze statue -  of Lenin, V.I.,

with assorted comrade soldiers and sailors set to march,

by Gorky Park, over the Crimea Bridge,

toward the Kremlin – is intact.

In May, parties of veterans queue to see Lenin

(erstwhile Ulyanov, V.I.) preserved.

Behind the Mausoleum, in the garden

of remembrance, is a bust of Stalin

(erstwhile Djugashvili, J.V.). Always,

fresh roses surround it. However,

in the Sculpture Park, the Great Helmsman,

in red granite, has had his nose knocked off.

Putin (sic), V.V. is crowned in the Tzar’s Cathedral,

the Annunciation.  The double-headed eagle flies.

Like his forebears, he takes the salute in Red Square.

They are all dressed up in the uniforms

of the Great Patriotic War – and the troops

(not a tenor  amongst them) greet their  little C in C

with the time dishonoured and oh

so genuinely moving: “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!”

Sometimes, that spring, when we opened the windows,

we thought we smelled tundra, sea and ice.

Opposite the Lenin statue, outside the Metro,

an elderly woman, in a worn, quilted coat,

sold wild hyacinths. We did not understand

the price.  She fluttered her hand above her heart.

Citizens falter in the purposeful street.

Above the fumes of money, confusion,

from the leaden gaps of sky comes a murmuring,

a sigh like breathing, pulsing of blood.

Swans are flying on unhurried wing beats,

necks as prows towards horizons. Glinting

like new coins, pedestrians’ faces

turn skyward… The city smells of warm stone.

Sun illuminates the prison’s granite.

Thrust through the bars of a cell window

are a pair of hands, palms upward. Whatever

they have done, those fingers, spread like wings, chill

the indifferent light…

St Peter's Square, Bernini's colonnades, The Basilica 1910

of the known world – of hewn porphyry,

of granite kept in its place, of usury.

Irony turns each illuminated page,

celebrates the dissemination

of the word, funds the seeding of Europe

beyond oceans, in jungle, across pampas,

over sierra.  Only the clash of

vultures and the seas’ predictable tides

can erase carrion from argent sands.

How light the Saviour is! The Virgin seems

to hold him with such ambivalent ease:

a supplicant offering a sacrifice,

a rescuer carrying a corpse.

Michelangelo's Pieta, St Peter's Basilica