This much we know: power’s empty as a barrel
that’s bottomless. No matter what you pour
or push or stick inside — it won’t fill up.
Put half the country in a bag and then
in water, or let infants suckle ingots,
or circle half the planet in a tank —
it brings no peace. She doesn’t dream of peace.
She dreams of what will be beneath her hand,
what should be. Otherwise who’d be in charge here?

Who sets himself astraddle all the earth,
desires that nothing of the earth remain
except for what lies there beneath his heel.
Lo, power moves, the airy spiral column,
out from the Kremlin’s walls of rigor mortis
into the tomblike silence of the provinces,
toward peripheries dead on their watch,
and farther still, toward mujahideen —
and back, like the reflection of a wave.

 

from

Elegy that Turns into a Requiem

Olga Sedakova

 

***the song line that pops in my brain this sunday morning is                the trouble with normal is it always gets worse.                                            i think that came out in the 80's, reagonomics, past is prelude. here it comes again—and there you go. 

yup, 1983.