Here’s a flower freshly plucked.

Gathered in the strongman’s filthy fist.

But like a fairy,

misjudged, though still substantial as a figure;

not a childish plaything; no, a plenipotentiary,

a noble warrior, a ghost daydreaming

of an aestival sprite – like any human

bodysoul gasping for air in winter’s hitch.

Perhaps little Nikki was an asthmatic lacking inspiration.

No matter what, he wasn’t erased, he’s merely absent here.

Present somewhere. Now, almost here in a poem

Bearing witness: calm pandemonium

held in the all-too human communist party’s hall,

Around the kremlin gremlin, the sick little monster.

While a singular Brit, an unfamiliar foreigner

And apologist, keeping notes for the rags

Back home – bizarre as that may be – said

Of our man Nikolai, the laboratory ratish figure,

“. . . a dim little man … wire rim spectacles perched

On his beaky little nose.”

His crimes were five feet tall.

Having loved the Soviet Stalin, he served him.

And standing with aplomb – diminutive, it’s true, but no

dimmer than any other spark. His spirits

Diminished but not because of any funk.

A fug, a miasma, filling the Lubyanka

Shrinks all psyches touching it.

He was capable of enduring diminution.

            The interrogator then pronounced him subversive.

Nikki said he was no perfidious agent, no conspirator.

“That’s irrational! Never heard of any such murder plots

breathed! Breathed by whom? Of course I am a patriot. A Marxist believer!

Truly a Leninist! A Trotskyite?  Are there any.

Yes, yes. I know there are Rightists. I’m no Rightist.”

Vyshinsky (Did Beria later eat him too? Stalin couldn’t remember):

“Why didn’t you say this before

in the informal hearings?”

“Simple. I had no faith what I claimed –

my innocence, as I am now – would come before

my government and before our leader Stalin.”

The audience echoed each other’s gasping,

while speaking none intelligible word.

Adjourned until the following day

(A week was more than enough for just about anybody

if you wanted them broken – such was the art of the NKVD)

and our little man was looking not half himself,

though he did look a little like a kid with autism.

(Shit. You would too. How many hours

could you last in the “special cell”?

It’s a hundred and two degrees under the lamps.

They make you drink glasses of salt water.

They make you look at pictures of unspeakable torture.)

The Brit was bored and mostly doodled,

leaning to one side;

his piles were killing him. The Soviet

monotony was getting to him. He showed

atrophy of mind, retardation of his thinking.

The reporter’s dispassionate gaze did note

that Krestinsky had been brushed up a bit.

Juno had trimmed his bangs.

Speedily the avid Atropos swept him into court.

His eyes bore yesterday’s light. He mumbled

like an automaton, knowing the trick of the NKVD

and the cipher of a single day.

Here’s the transcript of his schoolboy’s lesson:

Yesterday I was oppressed – or rather,

influenced – by a keenly felt false shame.

It poignantly evoked in me terror –

embarrassment – from being held before

this court – the atmosphere of this dread dock,

especially: impressions grounded in a fear

of public reading of the indictment which

exacerbated my infirmities –

poor health, a weakened will.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell the truth.

Ridiculous – when I, put to the test

before the face of world opinion,

hadn’t the character to honestly

admit conducting schemes with Trotskyites

all along. Now, I ask the court

respectfully

to register the statement I

submit: I’m guilty of the gravest crimes

and all the charges brought against me here.

Completely I admit all personal blame.  

Gentlemen, I completely take herein

and do accept responsibility

for every act of treachery and all

the treason done against the Soviet state.

Between two uniformed corpses,

Nikolai zombied down

the straight tiled aisle,

obdurate as the shadow on a granite dial.

Another day for the omnipotent NKVD.

They echoed each other’s coughing,

Speaking none intelligible word. 

Spring, 1993

Winter, 2025