ANDREW MAYNE POETRY 
                                                                                                           


MANDELSTAM’S KREMLIN MOUNTAIN MAN

We live, not sensing our country’s earth – its traces;
Our words blot out entirely at ten paces.

Yet, at our tête-à-têtes – the briefest snatch –
The Kremlin mountain man is present and on watch:

His podgy fingers, greasy as worm-bait;
His measured words, dumb-bell weighted;

His giant cockroach moustache that laughs at us;
Those gleaming knee-length boot-tops.

Around him herd his lean-necked functionaries,
Cretinous spawn whose service he cat-and-mouses;

Some squeak, some whimper, some purr.
To him alone the prod and claw.

He forges dictats, quick-fire – a row of horseshoes:
There’s one for the crotch, the forehead, brow or eyes.

Those he executes – popped-in trifles but munched with zest –
He’d enfold, in his native land, against his barrel-chest.

                                                Modern Poetry in Translation (3/15)
           
Poem 6
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