Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THESE DAYS, by NANCE VAN WINCKEL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THESE DAYS, by                    
First Line: In the mausoleum lies the corpse of a man who rode
Subject(s): Change; Death; Russia; Time; Dead, The; Soviet Union; Russians


In the mausoleum lies the corpse of a man who rode
in a black limo, burgundy velvet over the windows,
who drank grape brandy and griped about his liver,
griped about Nomenklatura and all manner
of ass-kissing in the party, though before he was dead, he was
the party, dying by slow degrees from Stalin's poison.

Four decades under glass. Never a perestroika man.
Face and fingers spectrally lit. The yellow street lights
come on for an hour, then off for two. Lignite smoke
browning the day's new snow. Because you asked me to,
I put on the black boots, stood by the cavernous body
in formaldehyde. Four degrees under a freeze.

Down chipped cobblestones, we'd crossed a glaze of snow.
The body next to me spoke with your voice; its hands
were yours touching glass. Our oval sighs of breath blasted
beside a week's worth of new graffiti: what could be,
what should be, shoved inside the dead man's orifices.
And no one paid these days to paint over it.


First published in The Kenyon Review, Volume 22 #2 Spring 2000.
www.kenyonreview.org/roth






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