Remember with me how Comrade Lenin laughed---
in a vociferous tone, even melodramatic---
when we learned some comrades tossed, down a mine's shaft,
Elizabeth Romanov, the nun and Orthodox fanatic.
But what does the Party's wisdom say about disturbing dreams?
Are they to be considered a bourgeois aberration?
Sleeping, I have looked upon a vast conflagration---
a leaping and writhing flame, with heat immeasurable
(as if from a star's iridescent core, a full
blast). From within it I heard the most haunting, horrific screams,
in Comrade Lenin's voice, which is quite unmistakeable.
On that pit's floor, they tell me, she sang hymns until she died:
to this the comrades who tossed her in there testified.
Starward
[*/+/^]