Stephen Owen
Koba (The Indomitable)
At first they called him “Koba”.
The intellectuals of the party
rather despised him:
after all, he was a peasant’s son
and worked as a cobbler from the age
of eight, until he won a place
at the Orthodox Seminary.
Koba was not a clever conversationalist
in the dialect of history
- he was expendable, was
tough enough to survive prison
time after time.
In the oilfields of Baku
he hid with poor muslin workers.
An old man tried to convert
Koba, now being called “Stalin”.
Koba listened, and thought.
Of course he feared the Okhrana.
It was soothing to hear of
Angels and prayer, until Koba
learnt that the sentence for
leaving Islam is death.
The party wouldn’t kill him
even if the Okhrana would.
Stalin thought hard
looked at the sallow faces
in the oil-light.
God doesn’t pay wages
- except to priests,
and that, God
has borrowed from the poor.
Koba, now Stalin
borrowed from tine,
he was no classy café man.
Sleeping lightly
he found his chain of being:
iron he could touch and weigh and see;
God hid so cleverly
that Koba couldn’t trust him.
Page(s) 64
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