-Anna Ahkmatova, Requiem
Supplicants waiting in long lines in the snow
Hoping to give their children some sense of truth
Among the gassings of electronic screens
Protestors and federals bellowing in turn
The news blows in as Siberian flurries
Some flailing this way, and some trailing that
Footprints disappear among the drifts
Rasputin’s body might float up in the spring
Describe each human as a number, as a stat
“Truth?” sneered Pontius Pilate, “now what is that?”
“Can you describe this?” a woman asked Ahkmatova
“Yes, I can,” she spoke, she wrote, she lived