Revolution

The room in which the mirrors come and go

makes revolution easy, the plainness

of your clothes defines need without want

and marks the travel of light

a hundred years of sun to earth

disguising Petrograd

in at your grandfather's window

and on and off the looking glasses

so arranged to let you see your back

while painting frugally

the uniform of coup and statehood.

Defining its albedo through the clouds

You have detained the glow of that day

a century of imprisoned depth

a fisher of the changing halo

the mistress of your own image

wreathed with a smile, tempered these days

by failures of dogma, to a regretful

lift of the mouth in remembrance

of sunnier days, which government

would now call decadent

in the bright, marine aurora

of your dressing room

a decade earlier, before October.

It was snowy in Neskuchnoye that day

but you painted your room like summer

bare shouldered and elated

ecstatic at your dressing-table clutter

all of it practical but beautiful

each thing a gift of early wonder

and you not long not a child

recalled each thing arriving in the house

being unwrapped or unhidden

by your father, back from business

in some far city like Saint Petersburg

sleeping in this same mirrored room.

The stasis of these later, sombre hues

becomes your exile, all the ideologies

defined by idiots in false fury

meaning nothing but separation

and repudiation of your homeland.

The articles of revolution are dry dust

or spent rounds in a basement

though that is not it at all

say all your marks on canvas

your curves of snowy exaltation

painting the cold air with kindness

and compassion.