near Katyn, April 1940

in the forest of Goat Hill near Katyn, 

during the month of April, 1940,

no prayer was answered.

The Mountain Eagle ordered it so.

he was doing his Pole dance,

hiding behind a black mustache

trimmed beneath black eyes,

proximate to a black heart.

he had come a long distance

from Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary

and the seamstress mother

whom he rarely visited.

his game was blood,

from others.

and fear,

from others.

and then he died.

during the Mikhail Gorbachev

realizations, 

old graves,

rotting boots,

smashed skulls,

skulls with bullet holes,

lost youth,

destroyed dreams,

all were found in amazing abundance.

history was to be rewritten,

again,

and again.

memory lived.

was the gulag archipelago dismantled

or momentarily lost from sight?

today,

swimming in oil profits and total corruption,

Russia has a new Tsar who is writing

a new chapter.

his millions of peasants watch,

but their windows

are framed inside a mausoleum.