My God Rachel, great poem. I didn't say so yesterday because I thought
I'd take time to write a more considered response today: the why of the great
(the grace, the poise, the pauses, the careful waltz, the halt waltz of
the poem) but I know I probably won't get that time to take, so I'm
garbling a huzzah now rather than not saluting you at all.
Mairead
On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, Rachel Loden wrote:
>
> IN THE GRAVEYARD OF FALLEN MONUMENTS
>
> Moscow, near Gorky Park
>
>
> Sometimes I like to think about Leonid Brezhnev
> whose white marble torso stands here dreaming
>
> in the Graveyard of Fallen Monuments. Leonid,
> I say, it’s Dick. Where are your goddamn legs?
>
> Seems like yesterday you broke out the Stoli
> at your dacha, and we laughed about détente.
>
> Those were good times. The world on a razor
> of our mutually assured destruction, and yet—
>
> comrade! you remember—we felt strangely free.
> Today not a single statue of Dick Nixon
>
> stands astride an American city, but there are
> National Guardsmen at the glittering bridges
>
> and Citizen Corps tipsters behind each tree.
> Leonid, they miss me. And the impoverished gray
>
> pensioners in Gorky Park, endlessly pining
> for “The Kuznetsk Metal Workers’ Supper,”
>
> they carry a wild red blowtorch for their Leonchik
> too. So dosvidan’ya, you sweet old bastard—
>
> I’m late to catch an Elks convention shambling
> through my Library in Yorba Linda, California,
>
> laden with cheap “Elvis Meets Nixon” keychains
> and a queer uneasiness they cannot place.
>
>
> --Rachel Loden
>
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