Archangel Cathedral
The coffins of great Russian princesses stand
in the basement of the Moscow Kremlin. They
were brought there in the 30s from the
destroyed Voznesensky Monastery.
There where the angels weave the sky,
where there is the triumph of the last dream,
where the cellar secrets conceal,
I asked myself: For whom
have I lived and suffered this life?
I didn’t fall prostrate in prayer,
I always sang my own words
in the dark storehouse of useless tsaritsas.
Here, under the gigantic splinter-bar of walls
there is disparagement of forgetfulness.
I stand over poisoned Glinskaya,
her pillaged tomb.
And over us now red flags,
now the alcoholic madness of the country.
Only timid bones can be seen
through the robbers’ hole in the sarcophagus.
In these cracks of the royal masonry,
in this mould of terrifying corners,
there are the denouements of chronic illness,
the revelation of prophetic words.
By the high iconostasis
by the column, by the coloured trunk
I will say before the pupils of the Saviour’s eyes
in my great shame:
‘Why did I live?’
So that breathing in the celestial blue
someone remembered the forgotten,
and someone heard, how a peasant woman wailed,
falling on the zinc coffin.
Translated by Richard McKane
Page(s) 166-167
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