Molotov's Library

In a grand Moscow apartment,late into the night,

Amid Persian carpets,Chinese jades

And sentimental gilt-framed genre paintings of peasants,

The round-headed imperturbable killer

Sits, reading and annotating books,

Diligently cataloguing thousands of works,

From his rich eclectic private library,

Studying his beloved Chekhov with particular passion,

And opening signed first editions by authors

Whom one day soon he will send to the Gulag.

There is always another title he must have:

He reads constantly, methodically, slowly,

Making endless notes in the margins,

With the same pen that signs death warrants,

Careful to limit his poetry-reading

Lest the love of dreams and beauty seduce him

Away from the discipline of fact and prose,

And the perfect society to come.

“The best filing clerk in Russia”,Lenin dubbed him,

And still the jibe hurts;his enemies will not laugh long,

He will outmanoeuvre and outlast them all;

Until they,too, are reduced to footnotes.