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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Ballad Of Lenin's Tomb</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This is the yarn he told me<br> As we sat in Casey's Bar,<br> That Rooshun mug who scammed from the jug<br> In the Land of the Crimson Star;<br> That Soviet guy with the single eye,<br> And the face like a flaming scar.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and the rat-grey workers wait<br>To tread the gloom of Lenin's Tomb, where the Comrade lies in state.<br>With lagging pace they scan his face, so weary yet so firm;<br>For years a score they've laboured sore to save him from the worm.<br>The Kremlin walls are grimly grey, but Lenin's Tomb is red,<br>And pilgrims from the Sour Lands say: "He sleeps and is not dead."<br>Before their eyes in peace he lies, a symbol and a sign,<br>And as they pass that dome of glass they see - a God Divine.<br>So Doctors plug him full of dope, for if he drops to dust,<br>So will collapse their faith and hope, the whole combine will bust.<br>But say, Tovarich; hark to me . . . a secret I'll disclose,<br>For I did see what none did see; I know what no one knows.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I was a Cheko terrorist - Oh I served the Soviets well,<br>Till they put me down on the bone-yard list, for the fear that I might tell;<br>That I might tell the thing I saw, and that only I did see,<br>They held me in quod with a firing squad to make a corpse of me.<br>But I got away, and here today I'm telling my tale to you;<br>Though it may sound weird, by Lenin's beard, so help me God it's true.<br>I slouched across that great Red Square, and watched the waiting line.<br>The mongrel sons of Marx were there, convened to Lenin's shrine;<br>Ten thousand men of Muscovy, Mongol and Turkoman,<br>Black-bonnets of the Aral Sea and Tatars of Kazan.<br>Kalmuck and Bashkir, Lett and Finn, Georgian, Jew and Lapp,<br>Kirghiz and Kazakh, crowding in to gaze at Lenin's map.<br>Aye, though a score of years had run I saw them pause and pray,<br>As mourners at the Tomb of one who died but yesterday.<br>I watched them in a bleary daze of bitterness and pain,<br>For oh, I missed the cheery blaze of vodka in my brain.<br>I stared, my eyes were hypnotized by that saturnine host,<br>When with a start that shook my heart I saw - I saw a ghost.<br>As in foggèd glass I saw him pass, and peer at me and grin -<br>A man I knew, a man I slew, Prince Boris Mazarin.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now do not think because I drink I love the flowing bowl;<br>But liquor kills remorse and stills the anguish of the soul.<br>And there's so much I would forget, stark horrors I have seen,<br>Faces and forms that haunt me yet, like shadows on a screen.<br>And of these sights that mar my nights the ghastliest by far<br>Is the death of Boris Mazarin, that soldier of the Czar.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A mighty nobleman was he; we took him by surprise;<br>His mother, son and daughters three we slew before his eyes.<br>We tortured him, with jibes and threats; then mad for glut of gore,<br>Upon our reeking bayonets we nailed him to the door.<br>But he defied us to the last, crying: "O carrion crew!<br>I'd die with joy could I destroy a hundred dogs like you."<br>I thrust my sword into his throat; the blade was gay with blood;<br>We flung him to his castle moat, and stamped him in its mud.<br>That mighty Cossack of the Don was dead with all his race....<br>And now I saw him coming on, dire vengeance in his face.<br>(Or was it some fantastic dream of my besotted brain?)<br>He looked at me with eyes a-gleam, the man whom I had slain.<br>He looked and bade me follow him; I could not help but go;<br>I joined the throng that passed along, so sorrowful and slow.<br>I followed with a sense of doom that shadow gaunt and grim;<br>Into the bowels of the Tomb I followed, followed him.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The light within was weird and dim, and icy cold the air;<br>My brow was wet with bitter sweat, I stumbled on the stair.<br>I tried to cry; my throat was dry; I sought to grip his arm;<br>For well I knew this man I slew was there to do us harm.<br>Lo! he was walking by my side, his fingers clutched my own,<br>This man I knew so well had died, his hand was naked bone.<br>His face was like a skull, his eyes were caverns of decay . . .<br>And so we came to the crystal frame where lonely Lenin lay.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Without a sound we shuffled round> I sought to make a sign,<br>But like a vice his hand of ice was biting into mine.<br>With leaden pace around the place where Lenin lies at rest,<br>We slouched, I saw his bony claw go fumbling to his breast.<br>With ghastly grin he groped within, and tore his robe apart,<br>And from the hollow of his ribs he drew his blackened heart. . . .<br>Ah no! Oh God! A bomb, a BOMB! And as I shrieked with dread,<br>With fiendish cry he raised it high, and . . . swung at Lenin's head.<br>Oh I was blinded by the flash and deafened by the roar,<br>And in a mess of bloody mash I wallowed on the floor.<br>Then Alps of darkness on me fell, and when I saw again<br>The leprous light 'twas in a cell, and I was racked with pain;<br>And ringèd around by shapes of gloom, who hoped that I would die;<br>For of the crowd that crammed the Tomb the sole to live was I.<br>They told me I had dreamed a dream that must not be revealed,<br>But by their eyes of evil gleam I knew my doom was sealed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I need not tell how from my cell in Lubianka gaol,<br>I broke away, but listen, here's the point of all my tale. . . .<br>Outside the "Gay Pay Oo" none knew of that grim scene of gore;<br>They closed the Tomb, and then they threw it open as before.<br>And there was Lenin, stiff and still, a symbol and a sign,<br>And rancid races come to thrill and wonder at his Shrine;<br>And hold the thought: if Lenin rot the Soviets will decay;<br>And there he sleeps and calm he keeps his watch and ward for aye.<br>Yet if you pass that frame of glass, peer closely at his phiz,<br>So stern and firm it mocks the worm, it looks like wax . . . and is.<br>They tell you he's a mummy - don't you make that bright mistake:<br>I tell you - he's a dummy; aye, a fiction and a fake.<br>This eye beheld the bloody bomb that bashed him on the bean.<br>I heard the crash, I saw the flash, yet . . . there he lies serene.<br>And by the roar that rocked the Tomb I ask: how could that be?<br>But if you doubt that deed of doom, just go yourself and see.<br>You think I'm mad, or drunk, or both . . . Well, I don't care a damn:<br>I tell you this: their Lenin is a waxen, show-case SHAM.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508695" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Such was the yarn he handed me,<br> Down there in Casey's Bar,<br> That Rooshun bug with the scrambled mug<br> From the land of the Commissar.<br> It may be true, I leave it you<br> To figger out how far.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Robert+William+Service">Robert William Service</a></strong></div>