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Akmatóva
by
David
W. Landrum
When
I wait, at night,
for her to come,
life,
it seems, hangs
by a strand.
----Anna Akhmatova,
"The Muse"
Her
marriages unhappy,
government
condemning
her and calling
her a whore,
banning
her books, consumed
by whole days
spent
standing
in ration lines
or at the door
of
a party office
where she would
implore
release
for friends and
family sent away
to
gulag prison camps
(they would ignore
the
pleading she would
come with day
by day).
They
did not like her
poems or the nude
sketches
Modigliani made
of her.
They
burned her books.
She scraped for
love and food.
Whatever
wrath her poetry
incurred,
she
stood against
the boorish, asinine,
dim
bureaucrats who
toed the party
line.
They
died. Their empire
fell, her poems
remain,
sketches
of naked truth
and art’s
disdain
for
any system or
bureaucracy
that
would restrict
a poem or nudity.
©
2007 by David
W. Landrum
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About the Author
David
W. Landrum
is Professor of
Humanities at
Cornerstone University
in Western Michigan
. His poetry has
appeared in numerous
journals and magazines,
including The
Formalist, The
New Formalist,
The Barefoot Muse,
Web Del Sol, and
many others. His
articles and fiction
have appeared
in Twentieth-Century
Literature, Philological
Quarterly, Amarillo
Bay, Loch Raven
Review. His chapbook,
Identities, is
available at:
http://www.formalpoetry.com/
ebooks/landrum.html.
He
is also the editor
of a new online
journal,
Lucid
Rhythms.
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