KNITTING CLOUDS IN A HEAVENLY PLACE

 

Renata preferred apricots, blintzes, caviar, a little vodka at times, over ailing nightmares

she hated avid weevil’s in porridge, harvest after harvest that bore so little food

preferred the Fabergé romance of ‘St Petersburg’ over ho hum ‘Petrograd’

 a knight in shining armour kiss above being wrestled to a Bolshevik’s floor

Julian calendar’s October revolt put pay to all that she preferred

the day Red molested White, desire and daydreams died

‘Peace, bread, and land’ the big man’s assurance

Renata never believed that for a single moment

squirreled away diamonds, silver and gold

found ‘Peace, bread, and land’

in a place of opportunity

across an ocean

far away

 

oh, how even now, Renata so misses her Mother Russia

‘Peace, bread, and land’ the big man’s assurance

‘Peace, bread, and land’ in exchange for quashed dissent

no man, woman or child feasts its soul on such a dirtied dish

 

through a window in a joint far removed from logic and sanity

one where little matters and death’s door bell often rings

Renata watches intently, listens, absorbs, is saddened

now a new big man gifts words, place of opportunities words

words of flawless White displacing arbitrary Red

positive, negative words

‘back then is new now’ words

 

Renata knits cumulonimbus clouds these days

sings to herself the song a wasted partisan once sang

 

‘…Let no one build walls to divide us

Walls of hatred nor walls of stone

Come greet the dawn and stand beside us

We’ll live together or we’ll die alone

In our world poisoned by exploitation

Those who have taken now they must give

And end the vanity of nations

We’ve but one earth on which to live…’

 

that the songs message still rang true made Renata cry

 

The verse above borrowed from Billy Bragg’s version of ‘The Internationale’