LEONID ANDREYEV AND MAXIM GORKY

What united Andreyev and Gorky was

the calling of the missionary;

one for pessimism, the other for optimism.

Both sought to convert

and art was the soap box on which they stood.

When the dark time came

the pessimist who had called all

to accept the pitiless existence of man in an uncaring

universe raged against it,

longing for hope and refusing to see

that the tunnel was a cul-de-sac

and its entrance had collapsed.

The optimist became a pessimist

and accepted the mass grave of all

of his hopes, the forced smile

painted on the crying clowns.

The pessimist died

longing for optimism through

more spilled blood. The

optimist died knowing

it had all been in vain; the canal

built of blood and bone

was the shrine to the god

he worshiped now, a devout Roman

his divine emperor after

the old was slain. Truth

mattered not as long as

the right words were said,

for in those words

were life and death

and the canal and the gulags,

pitiful death and pitiless life.

23.03.2018