Nikolay Klyuev
Lenin has the spirit of an Old Believer...

From the cycle LENIN

I

Lenin has the spirit of an Old Believer,
Intones his decrees like a priest,
And looks to the Pomorian Responses¹
For the source of all our grief.

Now the land belongs to the peasants,
The Church is no longer a state serf.
Now a bright new word chimes forth,
And the people arise here on earth.

Shiny red as a flame or as leather,
That word opens up every soul.
It was long ago that the heel of Ivan²
Forged the coin of his black iron rule.

Boris³, Lord of the Golden Horde⁴,
Rings proclamations on Ivan the Great⁵.
But Lenin has raised the blizzard and storm
To the angel ranks of heaven.

It’s pitch dark in Smolny⁶, as dark as a thicket,
The air smells of pine and blueberries.
There, in a humble log-built grave,
The relics of Old Russia lie buried.

“Where are we going to bury the corpse?”
The band of the brave want to know.
They wind their way round the flask-shaped coast
From Konevets⁷, raising dust like driven snow.

Ask instead of the clouds or the stars,
Or the dawns that turn the gorse bush red...
Ominous and bleak is that deserted graveyard
Where the robes of the Tsar lie interred.

The raven of fate will watch over them
In the faraway tombs of Hell.
So why must people mourn their loss
To the doom-laden Tartar death knell?

____
1. A document published in the eighteenth century by the schismatic Old Believers announcing that since the Orthodox Church had lost the true faith, the Old Believers could claim the right to condemn all the church’s practices. “The Church is not walls and roof,” they said, “but faith and life.”

2. Moscow Grand Prince Ivan III (1462-1505), under whom (in 1480) the final liberation from the Mongol conquest was achieved.

3. Tsar Boris Godunov (1598-1605) had Mongol ancestry.

4. The Tatar-Mongol political state that included most of Russia (1240-1480).

5. Ivan the Great is a bell tower in the Kremlin erected by Boris Godunov (1600).

6. The Smolny Institute was the center for meetings of the Soviets and the seat of Bolshevik power in Petrograd during and immediately after the Revolution.

7. Konevets Island is on Lake Ladoga directly north of St. Petersburg.

Translated by Bernard Meares