-No.
-On this day was born I.V. Stalin.
-Better if he hadn't been born.
Moscow street interview on Radio Rossiya, 21. December, 1991
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(Governor Tom's Note: "The Forgotten Farmers" is one of the poems I wrote for a poetry workshop in Prague in May and June of 1999. It was part of the masters of creative writing program at USC, from which I graduated that December. It was inspired by a lot of the reading I did in my spare time during high school on Stalin's iron grip on the Soviet Union from 1929-53, and in particular the systematic and very effective famine he inflicted on Ukrainian farmers.)
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I.
Hoe in hand, you battle the black earth,
A torn rag, and your children,
On your back.
Your sun-leathered skin is a sponge of sweat,
Stinging your hands' handle-torn blisters
Until they scream.
Your agony yields the waves of wheat,
Which flood your land with an ocean
Of gold.
Streams of sunlight, through dirt-painted panes,
Illuminate the earthen corners
Of your homes.
II.
A man invades these homes, his stiff grin
A man invades these homes, his stiff grin
Half-buried under a Georgian
Mustache.
He steals your harvest just as casually
As he strolls down your streets
In his soft, Caucasian boots.
The only harvest you have now is your brethren's
Blood muddying the soil beneath
Your skeletal toes.
The flesh of your wife droops on her frame,
And your children's bellies
Swell.
A sea of red washes away any trace
Of your existence, and all those
Who would have mourned.
