Of Pansies and Potatoes, Flowers and Hope
Life in Petersburg ---
Home where aristocrats & intelligensia
Spent afternoons in the park,
Danced the mazurka, scolded their serfs.
The remnants of a time past
Now, decaying buildings crumble and flake
Falling to dust in the streets,
Laid heavy by the weight of years unkept
And now the desiel scars from yellow buses' coughs,
Carrying the descendants
Of high life, St. Petersburg.
And who are the inheritants?
A babushka, stuck half-bent
A smooth but sharp right angle.
Perpetual sacks carrying a day's work
Slung over back. But too,
Always the touch of freshly gathered flowers
Mirroring a spirit that didn't yet die.
The potato harvester, dressed in rags
And a comrade's cap,
Up from the southern steppes - to big city life.
They're all the same, covered brown
With raped earth; fruitless, dry.
Their fingers black, and like ears
Of the potatoes,
Nerveless protrusions.
There's a sadness in his eyes, frozen still.
His cold motionless face won't show it,
or anything ....
A rock - the Great Russian
Inherited nature, cope and survive?
And so every day these souls go
Maybe out of habit, without thought,
Or maybe with new found hopes?
Hope?
But the future isn't here yet,
And for the Russia, no promise.
Tomorrow may never come for us
I've been told again, and again, Hope?
But perhaps, if it does, for one more day
Like sardines, they'll ride this bus
Along the streets, down Nevsky Prospect
Where troikas carried
The class of the class, Russia's elite ....
Reflected are history's remnants: the architecture
And the palaces, domes, and spires
Of Petersburg pansies,
The cultured fathers of despair.