METRONOME
The Arctic winds blew
The bitter cold slew
High in the sky
The birds of prey flew
The Heavens reached down
Wings, white as whey
We gathered around
The metronome played
We walked in the clouds
We died where we lay
Still begging for bread
Hands frozen, we prayed
The pendulum swung
The traitors, hung, swayed
We gathered around
The metronome played
Before the sun rose
We crawled and we cleaved
The flesh under snows
We ate, so we breathed
The sirens, slow wailed
The traitors, shot, brayed
We gathered around
The metronome played
872 days of cold, hunger & death was the siege of Leningrad. When the radio was not playing patriotic music to boost the morale of the citizens, it broadcast the beat of a metronome ... The faster the beat, the more imminent an attack.
Life is a diary waiting to be written
Observe
what is obvious
what is hidden
what is experienced
what is felt
A record of life
by day
by week
by year
by any moment
Twelve diary disciples did just that
Procession 1492 Columbus - America first
Progression 1660 Pepys - Restoration England
Obsession 1836 Darwin - origins of man
Expression 1863 Davis - free black woman
Impression 1906 Holden - Edwardian countryside
Confession 1910 Scott - frozen to death
Expression 1915 Woolf - inner self
Depression 1924 Wolfson - teenager in New York
Aggression 1941 Mukhina - siege of Leningrad
Suppression 1942 Frank - Jewish plight
Impression 1957 Guevara - viva Cuba
Repression 1976 Mandela - African apartheid
Procession, progression, obsession, expression, impression, confession, depression, aggression, suppression, repression
Life is simply a diary
Quiet Despair
In a besieged town
In Syria
Snow falls
People starves
Children die
We are powerless
Against
Those who are
Wrong
And those who are right
Snow falls
Silently on
Quiet despair
I think of
Leningrad
Sent
Sent out in our steel coffins to hunt enemy ships now the siege of Leningrad is broken, into the Baltic for some payback. Doing our duty for the Motherland in the Great Patriotic War, against the Nazi’s.
In the Devil’s own submarine, lucky 13. S13 proven in battle with the Finns some years before, that time they nearly sank her but failed. Repaired, she prowls the small inland sea looking for enemy ships; I hear there’s a big evacuation from the Germany.
Maybe we can get lucky; it’ll keep the NKVD off my back. Had a run in with them before on shore, I was only drunk, luckily they let me off, that time. Nineteen days at sea and nothing, have to return back to base soon.
But look! What is that? A light on the horizon, it must be a ship!
What a delight to realize,
While on my way to Leningrad,
You've given me my first 'White Night' -
A day stretched out before my eyes,
A night that won't exist for me,
As 'out of time' as love can be.
The clouds that stretch out without end
Are dusty white and indistinct,
Yet textured like a spongy fleece,
Like water ruffled by the wind
And frozen then, retains a view,
Abruptly shorn of azure hue.
Much like a child the haloed sun
Ingenuously tries to hide
Though brightly dressed against the cold.
Invisible but just for fun,
From cloud to cloud he's pleased to roam
While playing in a park near home.
With sudden shock I understand
What must have once been truly clouds
Are now pink fields of snow below,
Illusion fading as new land -
Dark sculpted, rocky slopes suffice
To shape the glacial flows of ice.
The stagnant sun prisms its light
Piercing a million floating shards
And cold coagulated clumps,
As frozen rivers end their flight
And spend themselves, collapse, give way,
Into the depths of Hudson Bay.
Leningrad...
You are a city of Romance,
a place to take a chance.
Land of golden domes,
far away from home.
A city filled with fountains,
in a dream...
beyond the mountains..
Leningrad...
We've come to see
your palace square,
That's where
you'll find me there...
In the city lights,
stroll-in' through the night.
A city to take chance in...
let your heart begin to dance in...
Leningrad...
You cast a magic in your spell,
and we'll remember well.
When we fell in love...
in Leningrad....
A song composed in Leningrad
May 18, 1988
I wonder if the homes in Venice
Have Venetian blinds;
Or if their window panes are topped
With shades of different kinds?
Are English muffins eaten
By the British with their tea?
Would Parisians recognize French toast?
I doubt they’d answer “Oui!”
If, in Amsterdam, I told you
That our meal would be Dutch treat,
Would a local understand we’d split
The cost of what we’d eat?
I’d be curious, in Leningrad,
If folks would start to sweat,
If I pulled a gun, suggesting
That we play Russian roulette?
In Istanbul, perhaps they’d think
That I was rather daffy
If I visited each candy shop
In search of Turkish taffy.
To Americans, such adjectives
Are charming and unique,
But I wonder if, to foreigners,
They might seem tongue-in-cheek.
UNDER HERO CITY
Now bravely the beloved general
Leaves the world of parade and medal.
Manoeuvres over, he does not stay
In night’s Volkovskoye - ***
But in my heart’s day.
Now mother’s hero knight, her love
With eyes blue like sky above,
Who made her children, -
And made her laugh, and
Always touched her heart.
Now father, my sun, finds me ‘neath the stair
Lifts me from the darkness, his little hare,
In soft warm hands with ease,
Laughing hero of my child stories –
Keeper of my heart’s keys.
Now, deep under Hero City’s embrace, **
I still see his shining face
Reflected in the night train window.
He travels with me always, rainbow
In my clouded heart.
** St. Petersburg (Leningrad) is known as the Hero City
*** Volkovskoye - very large cemetery in St. Petersburg with many war hero graves.
Ah, what beauty around!
This day began deliberately.
Even the sky and river Neva have a same a blue colour.
Between them domes fly,
and a thin steeple rises
with a little gold ship at the top.
In the Smolny Cathedral,
the bells whisper.
On the Gulf, calm and silence prevails.
I see unearthly beauty
in the lacy lattices of fencings;
lanterns guard bridges for you,
my St. Petersburg-Leningrad!
Here, palaces have stretched wings.
Here are fountains, as if a mirage.
The architects and masters
of the different countries and epochs
have constructed the Hermitage
next to the Neva.
Delightful cathedrals,
and the most elegant Summer Garden.
This proud facade of city is the fruit of a talent,
the tears and the loving of them.
Stone lions and sphinxes sit observing the Neva.
They look mysterious, even strict,
as if they store secrets and the past of my city
in these restless, difficult days.
I see Nevsky Prospekt in flood of lights,
and the Summer Garden - the SILENCE lives there!
I see for a window of my love and memory
So many different, beautiful days!
A man lies dying, a victim of a cause
his name not important, nor the time of his fall
Impaled in Romania, or crucified for the glory of Rome
cut are the sinews of conscience, dangling from a soulless abode
How many have bled, in reverence to a god or a nation
holy aren't thy waters, baptizing an armada of Spanish creation
For every 95 Thesis, must we have a 100 Year War
October bled Stalin's revolution, a red epitaph of Leningrad lore
Blame pernicious leaders, for cajoling fear and hate
yet whose firm handshake slits the throat, of civilized debate
A Ukrainian famine, a Jewish holocaust, a Japanese city eerily still
the killing fields are always fertile, beneath the city on a hill
Ignorance and greed, gorge a leviathan corpulent and crowned
cannibalism is its creed, its ruddy chains writhing unbound
How many voices were silenced, that sixth day of June
history too often forgets, to seal a tyrant's tomb
We are blessed with reason, the ability to discern
is life not a precious gift, impossible to return
Could you steal the last breath, from your child's loving kiss
would a god give you a righteous sword, to kill one of his
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