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Elegy In The Key Of Irony For Lev Kamenev, Old Bolshevik
Old Bolshevik, what good was friendship with dead Lenin?---
when, after his death, power was seized by brutal men in
the Party: latecomers, toadies, and glutting ticks
who shared no admiration for Old Bolsheviks.
You said in jest once that "what goes---will come---around
beneath the crimson Soviet flag's ascendent star!"
Your comrades thought those words made an impressive sound
when spoken in 1919 about the Czar.
Those words came back to you, lately, at the show trials;
when meek confessions, strangely, followed shrill denials.
And then comradely clemency gave way to slaughters,
from time to time---Old Bolsheviks consigned to death.
Now (Lenin's friendship worthless) draw your own last breath.
The sounding shots remind you of the Czar's four daughters.
Starward
[jlc]
