We left by train my American friend and I
in patchy snow and a cold March wind
for Leningrad in the sixties. Our Finnish guide
had a Russian name but at the border passed us
to a Russian guide with a Finnish name - a puzzle
of Reds and Whites, of old wars not forgotten
(ferries filled fast to Sweden when Russia threatened)
A samovar warmed us as we rumbled to the border
where a station mistress stood like a sentry,
holding a red flag dead centre on the platform.
A watchtower peered overhead, a uniformed inspector
coldly compared each face and passport photo,
sought contraband, checked titles of our books,
then pulled a knife and sliced an innocent orange.
We rumbled on to stop at Viipuri, the stolen city.
I remember the smell of soviet soap, the bread queue,
the shaky angles of antennae on the buildings
before we trundled to the port that Peter built
on marsh foundations and the lives of serfs,
beauty rising from the mud to buttress
the menace of a czar’s armed western window.
What did we find there my American friend and I?
An old hotel with unshaven drunks all leaning,
sheltering from the wind outside the entrance
and within a twanging group of mandolins,
upstairs a bathroom where the central heating
bent snake-like in a pipe upon the wall.
In the bedroom we feared the soviet bugging.
What were those wires beneath the carpet doing?
We’d heard of tourists cutting them then sleeping,
awoken to be told a chandelier beneath had fallen.
We caught a shaky bus full of people reading,
passed our fare, tore tickets from a trusted roll,
then walked the Nevsky Prospekt to a graveyard,
crowded with famous names - amongst them
a rusty workman’s implement as headstone.
So back past queues outside Kazan cathedral,
now the Museum of The History of Religion.
It was unlike the smaller churches where irresolute,
tiny grey-haired groups were standing. No doubt
preferring not to see hair shirts and manacles
or pictures of machine gun posts in towers,
or other Soviet cold news and propaganda.
We passed by and took the metro where a curious
friendly Russian spoke to us in German.
I said mein Freund er ist Amerikaner.
His refusal to shake hands told us a story.
We exited to find the theatre where touring
Stratford actors had followed us from Finland
There they’d played King Lear to quiet Finns,
now to applause of thunder they put on
The Comedy of Errors. Six curtain calls they took.
The audience knew that Shakespeare was its countryman.
We had met what we had come to find –
the cold March warmth of Russia.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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