Ralph Hawkins
TOOLS AND WORK
Others live off our labor; they drink our blood; our oppression quenches their thirst
with the tears of our wives, children and kin. Stalin
Height, 2 arshins, 4.5 vershki, average build;
the appearance of an ordinary psychopath
one of many
Peter had his eldest son killed for disobedience
Ivan’s father died from a big boil when Ivan was 3
his mother was assassinated when he was 7
he tore off bird’s wings
and threw cats off tall buildings
Peter II died from smallpox the day he was to be married
Peter III was an imbecile
his wife, an enlightened (!) despot got rid of him
her son Paul was killed in 01
Alexander had his leg blown off
Alex III died of nephritis (they never give up, hang on in there right to the last)
They intermarried all over Europe
Nicolas II looks like King George V
chickens clucking with fine feathers and spurs
playing sticky-up and bang-bang
and ride my cock horse
living it up conquering people, losing, realigning, changing sides
endlessly fucking it up and fucking us over
Magnitogorsk rose from nowhere on the Urals steppe
Polina Zhemchuzhina (gulagged) wife of Molotov, friend to Stalin’s wife
developed the Russian perfume industry
Red Moscow, Red Star and New Dawn (for a while)
on sale too summer jackets
Frankfurters, Ice Cream and Champagne
38 types of sausage
50 kinds of bread
carp, bream and pike swimming in tanks
killers, gossips, murderers
Stalin’s favourite was a young man
of little height and boyish in appearance
but his health was poor
tuberculosis, myasthenia, angina, malnutrition, anaemia, psoriasis up his
arm and down his leg sciatica
Everyone liked him
and none felt threatened (he released Polina from the gulag – she asked how is Stalin and being
told he was dead she collapsed. Made to divorce Molotov she remarried him on release.)
Humane, gentle and tactful,
a good worker
a most agreeable person
You can never tell
No longer one of the favourites
His wife killed herself
He drank heavily, in constant pain, he sank into despair!
Arrested in 1938 and shot.
Polina died in 1970
such changes have there been
Copyright © Ralph Hawkins 2017
Ralph Hawkins' most recent book is It Looks Like an Island But Sails Away (Shearsman 2015). There are two further collections from Shearsman, The Moon The Chief Hairdresser (highlights) (2004) and Gone To Marzipan (2009). He can be found reading at the Brighton Poetry Festival 2012 on YouTube and also archiveofthenow. He has interviewed Ted Berrigan (Talking in Tranquility). He has written articles and reviews about poets, Douglas Oliver, Alice Notley, Allen Fisher, Simon Pettet and others which can be found on intercapillaryspace. His work has appeared twice previously in Molly Bloom.