“See all those workers digging through that hill?”
The carter asked, there pointing with his whip
While two mismatched old horses lumbered on
Jerking carter and prisoners along the ruts.
An empty church, its now skeletal dome
Open to the dusk, lay somewhat in the way
Of where the rails would lay, just there among
Stray stalks of wheat, from lost and windblown seeds.
One prisoner yawning through his sorrows said
“I wonder why the Czar didn’t send me there
To carve with pick and shovel and barrow and hod
His new technology across the steppes.”
“Too close to Petersburg, and Moscow too,
My lad. The Czar wants you to labor far,
Far off. No mischief from you and your books,
Your poems, your nasty little magazines.”
“Oh, carter, is Pushkin unknown to you?
Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoyevsky too?
What stories do you tell your children, then?
Do you teach them to love their Russian letters?”
The carter laughed; he lit his pipe and said
“You intellectuals! Living in the past!
Education for the 19th century -
That’s what our children need, not your old books.”
“Someday,” the carter mused, “railways everywhere,
And steel will take you where you will be sent.
Electric light will make midday of night
And Russia’s soul will be great big machines!”
“Machines, and louder guns, and better clocks -
All these will make for better men, you’ll see.
You young fellows will live to see it; I won’t,
But what a happy land your Russia will be!”
And the cart rattled on, the horses tired,
Longing for the day’s end, and hay, and rest;
The prisoners made old jokes in laughing rhymes,
Begged ‘baccy from the carter, and wondered.