“With sleepy brush the barbarian artist/The master’s painting blackens” (Alexander Pushkin)
To save my skin
I became
Stalin’s doll on a string.
Pretender. Chronicler. Holy Fool.
Cowardice? Expedience?
Across the noise of time
the wolf cannot judge
the fear of the sheep.
And fear was my muse.
No Solzhenitsyn. No brave revolt.
But in my Fifth
I hid
my protest in plain sight.
When the bold and the brave
all disappeared,
I chose the Pushkin path;
I mimicked,
note for note,
the poet’s contempt -
for my ‘barbaric artist’.
Cathartic grief,
(in Stalin’s ears).
He did not hear the
echoes
of the prince of poets past.
He did not hear; I am here.
Holy Fool?
I saved my skin.
By Amanda Ellison
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