The Hand of Novelty In A Natural Death


By 1943 his hand was never held, always wringing
as no gripped thing in lack of anyone to answer.
So he grimaced with them and clutched at armrests
with white knuckles making snow-capped peaks
above the Hindu Kush on that Aeroflot Flight
carrying O Mighty One to touch down in Teheran -
with his escort guards of just 27 fighter planes….
Stalin did not want death not ever…ever,
And on return to Moscow he never flew again.

Yet that hand could still sign death, violent
death more regular than his use of toilet paper.
What was a Politburo apparatchik here or gone?
or a Commintern Chekist come to full term?
That hand could waive lives at Beria or Malenkov,
his obedient killing dogs, so that Jewish artists
like Mikhoels were run down by Cheka trucks out
smashing down the launch-champagne of Russia street.

And then, the hand…prescribed his own doctors.
The Chekist, Yagoda, was of course, executed.
All Gorkyists! doctors dealt in death by course;
failure to cease it was capital crime against the hand.
The hand, clutching for the water bottle, for Pravda.
And the fingers like eyes imprinting the fact that his
Doctors had all been waived to torture in his prisons.
Even Vinogradov, his personal physician was
In irons when the unseen hand made its stroke.

And after that last Stroke, as he choked, he woke -
“It was a terrible glance, insane or…angry, full of
the fear of death…suddenly he lifted his left hand
as though he were pointing to something up above
and bringing down a curse on all. The gesture was
incomprehensible and full of menace.” So Svetlana
Stalin said. And Martin Amis* adds. “What was he
(Stalin) doing? He was groping for his power.”

Here's the dexterity plague, active force of the evil hand,
as us that go at wringing hands, like new troglodytes who seek
out crafty novelty. The Novelty? Unlike most all of Russia
violated, this was Stalin dying a natural death.



* Martin Amis - Koba The Dread