Mandelstam in the Transit Camp

                           near Vladivostok, 1938

his body a starved
and emaciated flute
his fingers turning into
gloves of cracked ice

tapping out the rhythm
of a poem

while the peasant-slayer
drums the “thick worms
of his fingers” on a table
in Moscow—

while the white wolf
the ice fangs of history
bear down on them both

Susan Kelly DeWitt | Chernobyl
Contents | Mudlark No. 46 (2012)