“I think I’d get along very well with Vladimir Putin. I just think so,” Trump said in one of his first comments about the Russian leader since launching his presidential bid last June. 7/31/2015
The poet’s corner rests
in the line where mothers wait,
any word will do –
does he live or
is he gone?
Whisper from the gulag –
no one knows,
only the living son is
knocked on his butt
for being human.
When poets zip their lips
and praise their leaders then
sons are released
into bitterness.
The noisy poets clamor
at Red Square once again
invasions apparently
stroke the pen of
liberty and yes, the pen
does rattle the mighty sword.
The sword is swift and neat
into psychiatric ward
it runs the poet through.
But her words her word her words
float likes birds upon the air
and they sing to me and you.
In May of ’75
Cetin Mert drowned in the Spree,
a 5-year-old child
celebrating his birthday.
I heard it on the news,
how they could not rescue him
with the guns of East Berlin
pointing westward.
In this same year I walked
from east to west
and never would I have thought
one day that there would be
a public so bereft of history
to forget. For
from history we learn nothing
and nothing shall we gain,
the onlooker is confused
at the havoc that ensues
when a two-bit KGB dictator
and his puppet son
fashion anew all that
we once called treason
not so long ago.
Congratulations Russia
you finally have won,
you broke a leaky kettle
and the water has run off.
Push us into rabbit holes
dear leaders one and all.
2/2018
Historical note: Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) was a major Russian poet of the 20th century. Her son spent many years in a Siberian prison camp. Natalya Gorbanevskaya (1936-2013) was one of the writers who protested the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 at Red Square. She was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for this action. Eventually she emigrated to France. I first heard about the drowning of Cetin Mert on the radio when I was living in Freiburg in 1975. For more information visit Berlin Wall Memorial
Anne's mediocre poetry 