Volodya

‘Как вас зовут?’

‘Меня зовут Володя,

цар царов,

смотрите на мои работы

и беспокойтесь.’*

 

Our latter-day Ozymandias

surveys the destruction

he has wrought

- and finds it good.

He has no fear of General Winter:

he will make it nuclear

if he must.

A legacy of waste lands

is still a legacy, after all.

 

‘Besides’ he says, ‘we are unwell,

we are not immune

to diseases or their cures

- which can be so invasive.

I am curing the disease

of democracy

a tumour at a time.’

 

Tchyernobog looks

at the little man:

Tchyort to his enemies,

Midas to those friends in Albion,

so perfidious in business,

yet holier than thou in politics.

 

Tchyernobog smiles,

Time and The Devil

will bring Volodya everything

he needs and deserves;

the toppled statuary, the eternal

infamy of the despot,

the opprobrium of posterity

and the box awaiting

kings and peasants both.

 

 

*”What’s your name?”

“They call me Volodya,

Tsar of Tsars,

look on my works

- and panic.”

 

AUDIO HERE