Day of the Oprichnik

A government driver takes me home in my Mercedov. I’m sprawled out and half asleep. Nighttime Moscow whizzes by. Lights. Moscow’s late-night suburbs race by. Firs and roofs. Roofs and firs. Roofirs, dusted with snow. After a full day of work it’s good to leave the stern capital behind and return to my dear Moscow woods. To say farewell to Moscow. Because Moscow is the head of all Russia. And the head has a brain. By night the brain tires. And sings in its sleep. And in the singing there’s motion: contraction, expansion. Tension. Suspension. Millions and millions of volts and amps create the necessary rate. Energy doctors dwell there. Nuclear bricks flicker. They whistle and align. Together they bind. Stick fast forever and evermore. And man is made from this store. Molecule houses of three rows. Even four or five. Which is wide? Sometimes of eighty-eight. We’ll ask them later. And all the houses are behind sturdy fences, they all have guards, the subversive vermin, willful worms, born with silver spoons, for execution doomed. The state cauldrons boil. The fat, fat, fat of those who’ve met their Maker drips on the snow. Human fat, rendered from a cast iron cauldron brimming over, over, overflow, overflowing. An unending stream of fat pouring flowing out on the snow. It swirls in the bitter cold it swirls. Swirls into frozen mother of pearl. It freezes and sets, sets, sets, sets into a sculpture so beautiful. Sublime. Superb. Inimitable. Splendid. Delightful. The beauty of the fat sculpture is divine and indescribable. The pink, mother-of-pearl fat, tender, cool. Her Highness’s breast is cast from the fat of her subjects. The enormous breast of Her Highness! It hangs above us in the blue. It is vast! If only to reach her, fly upward on a swift-winged Chinese airplane, on our enemies’ fierce fighter jets, to touch her with my lips, to press against her breast, to press my cheek, press, press, freeze forever, so no cripples or clowns can tear me away, so that no one can pull me off, off the breast, pull me away from Her Highness’s breast, nor rip away with red-hot tongs, nor slice off with a knife, nor crack apart with a crowbar, nor break with bones, bones crack loud, the meat bursts, my meat, my flesh, fleeting, corruptible meat, my poor meat, glory to you in the heavens above, glory to you for now and evermore, mamo, Our White Fat!