The thirteenth apostle,
Richard Crouchback of the Russian word,
He plunged his hands into the black earth
Of Ukraine, the tangled roots.
Faith and fiction held him,longing
For truth,against the world.
Under a monk’s hood
The long nosed shadow-face
Scented sulphur,damned
To an author’s seditious mission.
From a provincial Annunciation-
Infant held in the Virgin’s arms-
He carried his family legend
Like a Paschal candle to light
The beacons of Old Russia.
Schoolmates mocked the “mysterious dwarf.”
Clever fool,God’s favoured sufferer,
He confessed to the Eurasian moon,
Full of Christian rage and heathen compassion.
The stations stretched before him:
Moscow. Rome.Jerusalem.
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