In far Chelyabinsk cry the windswept gales
that herd the city’s grey. In tales
where gather all of Russia’s furthest winds,
wherein the centrifuge begins –
there, Fyodor Volkov rides the wings of Death.
He masks the flower-rotted breath;
the gentle rosy mimicry of sleep
he paints. A canvas that won’t keep,
that breathes not; quiet client, slab to bed –
a witch-word, whispered by the dead.
Ah, Fyodor Ilyich – keep us but a day,
in falsehood clothe us ‘fore we lay.
The price for coaxing back what Death has claimed –
a twinging of the soul that can’t be named.
For Death’s arrest hangs hinge-like on his art –
to do it takes a certain sickened heart.
Such nonsense leaps the fence in clearer thoughts.
But God, those trawling nights – they rot
what’s left. Through drink he finds a fervid way
to mute the tenor of his days.
But drink in time betrays, all mortals find –
and thus our Fyodor found, unsound
of mind; when his dismissal rightly came,
he severed ties and bore his shame.
The decade trails its fingers in the sand.
To look on Fyodor – here’s a man
who spent his youth enshrining Death,
now of some vital thing bereft.
By day he tidies city grounds, for pay
that nightly funds his drunken ways;
on one such night he stumbling went
unknowing to his death. The tenement,
its courtyard shorn of life and leaves, did seem
to grin, and bare its windowed teeth;
there, Fyodor Volkov felt his twinging soul,
and drank until it twinged no more.
When at the last by dawn he stood, the block
of sunken flagstone wrought his fall;
and swift his temple struck the waiting rock.
Thus Death did heed the tired call,
accomplice once again to God’s dry wit.
For Fyodor’s fate is rank with it –
the selfsame morgue he rued in life awaits,
and as John Doe, he’ll pass the gates;
And then – Anton! Come quick, look here –
You’ll never guess who’s come to call!
It’s Fyodor, after all these years –
late for his shift, as usual.
Kataryna Zharkovna is a poet born in Serbia, grown in Canada, and honed in Siberia. She holds a hard-won English Specialist’s degree from the University of Toronto, and her work can be found or forthcoming in magazines such as Sundial, Neologism, The Astorian, Mindfork and others. When not agonizing over giving form to the formless, she spends time befriending swans and taking care of two puckishly charming children.
“Death of a Mortician” was previously published in Pulsebeat Magazine.