Michael H. Levin: Poems and Prose
KUNSTOVO
(5 March 1953)
They say [Maria Yudina’s] recording of Mozart was on the record player when the ‘leader and teacher’ was found. . .
-- Shostakovich, Testimony(1979)
The fast-play disk
spins, stylus
scratching spindle.
The Hetman’s defunct
though no one yet knows.
It’s three AM; when
minions arrive, fearful
to knock, there’ll be hell to pay
and savage successions.
He sprawls on
his couch in Red pseudo-garb,
short as a toadstool, webfoot
concealed by tall boots
nicotined fingers flung
outward; pockmarks for once
not erased. The disk
was made from pure panic:
hearing her broadcast, he
asked for the record -- the
session was live. Pre-dawn
saw a terrified
orchestra, quivering
conductors, marched to fulfill
his ‘wish.’ One round
quickly was pressed.
When he sent her a cash prize
she gifted it whole to the Church
“for your sins.”
Warrants to wipe her
lay blank on his desk
though millions were inked
without pity. Opaque
as Asia, did the ogre
have feelings? Was it
merely a whim of power –
of ‘could, but choose
not.’ His cause
held lives less than zero,
yet she played on:
force steely and strange
to faint applause.
Rat's Ass Review, Winter 2021