Art, like revolt, is a movement which exalts and denies at the same time.
–Albert Camus, “Art and Revolt” (Partisan Review No. 3, May–June 1952).

U.S.S.R., 1944

Summer, and the Voice of Moscow squawked out names of heroes
while soldiers and girls milled around outside the Metropole.
Pravda announced business as usual, wet papers in doorways

still soaked with the morning’s rain. It opined,
there are no special, insurmountable circumstances now—
summer, and the Voice of Moscow squawked out names of heroes

and sugar cost three rubles a pound, a bar of soap one hundred,
and there was an option, for a foreign correspondent, to eat at the hotel.
Pravda announced business as usual, wet papers in doorways.

Thoughts turned to travel: up to one hundred and forty kilometres
without military permit. Red Army officers danced with demi-mondaines;
summer, and the Voice of Moscow squawked out names of heroes.

Oscar Wilde’s The Ideal Husband is lauded by the intelligentsia
for its post-war medicinal purpose: “you have escapist art in America,
don’t you?” Pravda announced business as usual, wet papers in doorways.

And etiquette mattered. Translated and made the rounds, an English
book exhorted not to cough, not to knock down ladies; no fights in public!
Summer, and the Voice of Moscow squawked out names of heroes,
Pravda announced business as usual, wet papers in doorways.

Ballet girls in the Bolshoi are tested on Stalin’s teachings.
There is no morality outside politics. Art for art’s sakers must
not misuse patriotism. Realistic tendencies have become qualities of Soviet art

such that artists will show great love for their country. Banish the
decayed bourgeois love of art that denies life and its manifold toils.
Ballet girls in the Bolshoi are tested on Stalin’s teachings.

With no opposition, the party in power becomes its own effective critic.
Functionaries and the press express critical opinion, reprimands, warnings.
Realistic tendencies have become qualities of Soviet art.

The blockheadedness of bureaucrats made the editorial pages:
dilapidation on the part of those who issue substandard baby layettes,
funerary furniture. Ballet girls in the Bolshoi are tested on Stalin’s teachings.

The self-praise of the propaganda bureau was kept in check as Russians
of all walks both praised and criticized the government – in private.
Realistic tendencies have become qualities of Soviet art.

The industrious correspondent would learn the language,
ignore the Press Department. All the more to remain skeptical
of ballet girls in the Bolshoi so busy studying Stalin’s teachings,
those realistic tendencies, qualities of Soviet art.

[Some lines in this poem have been adapted from sentences found in Edgar Snow’s The Pattern of Soviet Power. (New York: Random House, 1945)]