Oh, such Zhivago snows
sudden, spirited
sweeps rushing across
our land un-Soviet

not Russian steppes
but the same, of cold northerly winds
swirling this-a-way-that
stopping just to snip
samples of unscarved skin

while with wretched nerves
the watch is on
as was that of Pasternak's
passionate poet-doctor, Yury
prisoner of life
with his love, Nurse Antipov, Lara, Larissa
while wolves-in-waiting
gesticulated their jaws
ready predators in wooded foreground

she thought them dogs
but sensed dark omen in their nightly clamor
their approach, subtle at first, drawing in
calling to an inevitable end
romance's refuge
the feigned safe sanctuary
and terrain of love
amid Russia's rampant rages
and repression
unruly realm for peoples and
implied remission from the arts

Lara, she who unwittingly held
tether on Yury from his wife Tonya
with their children, the last of whom he never saw
slept with him, in his solitude of what would be sin
but sweetness
she who would develop a sisterhood
with his wife, later assisting her in childbirth
during his imprisonment
just as Yury himself admired Lara's enduring love
for her long-absent husband, Pasha Antipov
a lost soul of wild political madness
who led with slaughter now
mistaking her direction

but the ghost of the Lara and Yury play house
became unlicensed for disloyalties
an inadequate shell
an infested ice igoo
its escape ethereal
and their enemy Komarovsky
tricked them into
separate destinies
parting them under false farewells
kidnapping Lara and her daughter, Katya
for himself

the memory of the muses,
at the House of The Caryatids
Cherubs who had landmarked
the visits to the neighborhood
of their start at love
fell like a House of Cards
as would the destiny
of the nation and the players

but Yuri’s poems
would survive to serve as
witness to the pains, poverty and pleasures
not only theirs but all
the common peoples'

at an ice-covered window pane
at his humble wooden desk
as Lara slept
he'd captured the theater of
the revolution
and the attacks on freedom
of artistic endeavor and love
while Lara, the language of his inspiration
early implored him to copy and preserve
his images, which he'd proceeded to, and
polished to be published
commemoratives of his story
on pages to live
long past their epoch's bane
of bloody-scripted
snows and squalor

01/30/2001

Posted on 01/29/2004
Copyright © 2024 Maureen Glaude