All regimes have their confiscations,
Thus by edict thy made them dumb:
Shudder children, and do not dream their names,
Mandelstam who grovelled for names,
Ahkmatova and Pasternak who crept their poetry
Past factories where lists were spun,
Past foremen fat with budgets of lies,
Through queues of relatives who came with stooped hearts
To whisper their litanies of names,
Past the basilica of small consolation.
In the wintered sabbath the Russian world held still;
Hoar-frost crackled on the seeming weight of bells.
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