1812

A fuse is lit.

The city echoes silence

                             as though

her sounds had fled

with her people through

                   the Kolomna Gate.

Down in the square

a riot that was yesterday

la Grande Armée

mimes a torch-lit fair

trading

ordered safety for

looted furs and brandy. High

above them in a palace window

two deliberate candles

testify

the Emperor

works toward the dawn.

Redingote grise and little cocked-hat

          flung across

a stupidly rococo

and un-martial chair;

arsenic numbed and swollen legs

useless now for pacing

                    he lies

waiting on the captured bed

of the Tsar of All the Russias.

Waiting.

A week ago

at Borodino

massed artillery tore a hole in time

and eighty-thousand dead

groaned across a century at the Somme.

Now

thrust and counter-thrust

realpolitik

and pride’s rationalisations

probe each other’s entrails on the ceiling

 – the hollow calculations

of Pyrrhus’ triumphant vigil.

Stasis. Mute cacophony

of footsteps longed-for in vain.

Burnout – drained

by wrangling a machine

whose levers

shop-worn

jump no more at his touch.

Sleep

 – retreat

into an ice-lashed nightmare

groping in the blizzard

for a peace that will not come.

A fuse is lit.

Beyond the guttering tongues

                   of his propagandist candles

Moscow starts to burn.