Bolsheviks

Bolsheviks move around, like the medieval papacy,
from country to country.
‘The eternal lightning of Lenin’s bones’
can be generated by wind-farms and solar panels,
the cruelty of ‘man is a wolf to man’
can turn into vegetarianism.

They may even take on the name
of a previous enemy, like
the various kinds of Democrats
before the October Revolution.

But they are always with us,
like the poor:
the Commissars and the technocrats
who decide what is good for the masses
and who deserve their privileges,
their special stores, schools, hospitals,
their fine apartments and dachas,
because they are serving the people.

They are always with us,
the intelligentsia
deciding our belief system
we can dissent from only in whispers;
always the Stalin awards for conformity.

Always the changing past
and the certain future Utopia,
the ever-present surveillance,
the documents without which
we are a non-person;
always the Party lists, and placemen;
the heads of industry who carry
too heavy a burden

There is always, unfortunately,
the idiot peasantry,
the stupid old babushka,
who continues to light candles
in empty village churches
and mumble her prayers at night
before she talks to her dead husband.