Suffocating in a storm of flags.
Colour-blind, lame, a dumb wind swirls,
Whistles in the damp enclosing dark
Through Lenin's hand held high in the park.
The bearded demagogue launches words
Blunt on the edge of incipient storm,
Cries "Dostoyevsky had a vision of hell
As a freezing bath house where spiders dwell"
And he rattles the spiders from the iron drains
As heavy drops of colourless rain
Carry oblique across the square
We button grey overcoats and cheer.
On the sodden roof of the mausoleum
Gallows high flagpoles creak in the breeze
World never waking from hag-ridden slumber
Racked on the gathering queues of thunder
Fitful squalls of bullets and flags
Halls of tyrants crucified
You can flag the roof but not the land
October, month of spiders, is always at hand.