Black Russian

The ice.Always the ice.The dark mother.

So little grain from the brief season.

The peasants suspicious and grumbling,

Hating the merchants’ rapacity.

What might come riding out of the plains,

Tatars from the east, Germans from the west?

The backward, the resentful, the disillusioned

Have a special wisdom.

Why must there always be a false utopia

To yearn for, to leap at- and fail?

Perhaps contradictions need not be resolved.

Let them be, let them breed, and be free.

Empire and chaos hold sway

Over the serfs, always crumbling back

Into the dirt,as thunderclouds mass

In the steppe heavens,and hunters

Kiss their lucky charms,setting out.

Whatever they may say, the people

Favour the black horse over the white.

This struggle,futile and fatiguing,leading

Through catastrophe,again and again,

Will never be abandoned,for the damned

Are romantics and believers to the end.