Our Great Leader Poem by Kathy Greethurst

After Fyrdor Shurpin

That's him, there,
in the painting on the wall.
See how the sun lights up his face
and makes him look alive.
We used to call him ‘our father'
because he loved us and kept us safe.
He turned the motherland into a great
industrial nation - with brand new tractors,
harvesters and collective farms.
He gave us an apartment to live in
- with inside toilet and running water.
I went to school, learned to read and write,
and became a daughter of the Revolution.
He stretched pipelines from Moscow
to Vladivostok and built factories
and foundries with giant chimneys
that looked like sculptures along the skyline.

But all that doesn't matter now -
the painting's shut away in the archive,
here at the Tretyakov, only seen by me,
when I clean off the dust.