My Santiago

Gorky Park - Fading Summer - 2018

Gorky Park, Until now, an unreal figment, Of Cold War espionage, Hollywood sub-plots, And subtle twists of fate, With the Russians - inevitably the bad guys.

But this Gorky Park Is relaxed, calm, An oasis in Moscow, Filled on this weekday, With families, Moscovites, Doing what they do in summer, In the parks, on the rides, Soaking up the last of the summer rays, Having lattes with sesame seeds and ginger, By the lake.

And the sculpture garden captures me

With hauntingly real faces from history and religion, Clowns, revolutionaries, saints, poets and saviours,

Spanning time, Fact and myth, Given a new lease by art.

Here too, are Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev, Architects of modern Russia; The Bolsheviks from the October cleansing, To Glasnost and beyond;

And the bust of Marx, Whose ‘Das Capital’, Started it.

But don’t look for Trotsky here, His fate,

Usurped, exiled and ice-picked

-

in Mexico - Is excused from the pantheon at Gorky!

Gorky Park, Ninety years old, In Moscow’s leaf- dropping, Mazy afternoon,