POETIC LICENSE
©2004 Vladimir Orlov
A notion of sublimated freedom is
so dear to the hearts of writers.
Is it ephemeral or factual, they wonder.
They keep deliberating, doubting, hesitating
and waiting for Judgment Day.
The poetic meaning of freedom
is obscure enough to be by-passed.
A rush of some forgotten emotion
now flashes through my servile mind
of someone who failed to inherit freedom
and now strives for its elusive poetic form.
Appeal to evidence is awkward,
if tolerated at all.
Poetry indulges our hidden propensity
for the invisible which seems so real.
Poets share much more
than their in-built wishful thinking,
their desire for the impalpable
and what they think is divine.
They share a jarring longing for
simple human freedom they can hardly
come by in real life.
RUSSIAN BUSINESS,
OR THE VOLATILE EMERGING MARKETS
©2004 Vladimir Orlov
He came to Russia to survey
If he could do his business there.
But soon he discovered he had to defray
The Asian eccentricity that looked unfair.
He came to resemble a vessel in distress
Discharged by buccaneers right in the raving ocean.
He complained that the taxation press
Wasn’t quite of his free-market notion.
He cried that the agreed and liquidated damages
Got too prodigious to be further agreed upon.
He whispered the haunting Russian “roofing” images
Were one big pagan image of the Rubicon
Which nobody of his native business set
Would have ever passed, even in a business match.
He was not a gambler, but now he would bet
He’d rather go home with all possible dispatch.
“A tough but civil interview”
Not unkindly was he granted.
And quarter losses had to be kept in view,
And be accounted for, and thoroughly appreciated.
The August, 1998, default on the state debt “GKO”
Was the last lucrative equity he’d bought.
It now lashes him with the torn bonds of woe
And plenty of inspiring and edifying thought.
THE KREMLIN WALLS.
©2004 Vladimir Orlov
The Kremlin Walls
Built up to enclose
God’s envoys in the halls
A single touch of 1917 froze
With no hope they will be
Warm again, even though
Someone is so eager to see
Them thaw and glow.
But that'll hardly be
If the ice is still
Within, with no sign to see
It'll ever leave the hill.
The Kremlin Tombs
So hopelessly firm
Are like devastating bombs
Made by a secret firm.
And they are yet to churn
The soft butter which the hill
Is made of. But where is the turn
Which leads to at least a single mill?
[click to view introduction]