Saint Petersburg Poem by Joseph S. Josephides

At the stone hour, though crushed by tanks, our snow
a white wing it shields the wheat to nurture us, endurance.

At the stone hour, although crushed by tank treads, our snow
a white wing it shields the wheat to nurture us, endurance.

The time when our deer did not govern its own life has passed,
when, released from the cage by uniformed trumpeters and horsemen,
it was to be finished off by the Czar to amuse his boredom.

We have asked for clear skies, to throw the madman from the throne,
for wind, to smash the doors and the chandeliers of the palaces,
the bridges brought from Amsterdam by the infiltrators.

God has blessed our bread, and you have stormed to grab it
with a blade up your sleeve, mouth chaos, Arian denture,
certain that triumphant you would celebrate at the “Astoria”,
that they would raise you a statue of granite, stature of a man.
You had been counting on the growl of the bear, we on the music
of Orpheus and on the faith of St.Serge, and we tame you.

You count, with your soldiers, to two, one-two, left-right, but
we count to seven hundred days, when dying we stood alive
whem our elders though freezing threw no book in the fireplace.
You shoot at Pushkin’s statue. A poet is not murdered, is risen
up with She, the Wider of all Heavens, with an army of Ivans?

Trapped in your armor as you are – you invite us in to show
the wound of the raped youth, the blood that engulfs and colors
your museum of early dreams – killing yourself is a solution.

Our solution is the sacrificial blood that penetrates the snow,
that nurtures and warms the wheat, and for us endurance.



© JosephJosephides

Translation by Irena Ioannides and Joseph S. Josepohides (Cyprus, Canada)