Everyone talks about
the good old days
when many boats docked here,
but nostalgia is smoke,
not
a pocket full of roubles.
Hunger
is not new to me,
I've survived
eighty Russian winters.
I worry
for my grand-daughter,
her no good husband
drunk at 10 a.m.
digging his grave
with vodka.
But tomorrow
she goes to Moscow.
She's strong,
has a good brain.
I've told her
to take any job,
pride never filled
a belly.
I'm going
to church now
to pray for her.
I take the long way round
to avoid the town square,
that wretched statue
of Lenin.
I'd rather trust
the currents of the Volga
than our leaders,
they keep
mistresses
not
promises.
In church
I pray for my grand-daughter,
not only that she may secure a job,
but also that one day she will leave Russia.
Russia
is an old woman
standing in a queue,
waiting,
in all weather
for hours,
to buy something,
perhaps
butter,
perhaps
matches.
Waiting has become
her self-portrait,
mass-produced.
A queue,
a bureaucrat,
a sales clerk,
may only be leap-frogged with a bribe.
That's the way it is.
Life has taught me
how to shrug
and I can still laugh
at myself,
fishing all day,
catching nothing.
But that's typical of us,
believing something's
below the surface,
valuable,
elusive.
It's equality that still eludes us.
The time of thugs has not ended.
Blood and champagne,
caviar and bullets,
the chess of greed.
My ineffectual, old man's anger
I expend in my garden,
cursing weeds, fallen leaves,
gluttonous snails,
as I bend with shovel or rake.
These last days
are mine.
I sit by the Volga,
its relentless flow,
look at cloud or bird
drifting above,
everything
transient,
going beyond
our limited
vision and knowledge.