A song to democracy
Author: Natalya Antonova
Pankina Natalia, Decolonise me gently with your tongue, 2023.
This poem should have been
A critical analysis
Of the suppressed and invisible
Women’s art work
In the visual arts scene.
This poem should have forayed into patriarchy –
That evil Geist.
It could have featured an interview with a female artist
Who swings between international flights.
But this is a song to democracy –
An adverse piece of self-criticism.
Poetry is a gateway
Into the prison
Of language –
The We of the I.
Sing with me:
– The democracy attraction
Is where We abide.
Some three sublime hours
To inhabit the pain,
To get a grasp
Of the time-infused despair.
– What side are you on? – I hear from a distance.
I mumble, as though someone listens:
– To “locate” and “position” oneself
Means to flatten the flow of history.
To “locate” oneself on the margins, much worse,
Invites the misery
Of self-denigration.
The voice of inner reflection
Is at a loss:
– What does it matter?
Know the simple truism, abided by all
In the progressive gaggle:
Victory at all costs
Over the absolute evil –
The triumph over barbarism
Of democratic freedoms.
I silently nod,
Gazing upon the patches on the map,
Red, blue, and green.
They mix into one grey mass
Until I flatly lie on the screen.
Wasted, I contemplate the figures of unfreedom
In the narrow window
Of the PowerPoint.
Dates when women of the world
Cast their ballot
For the acting party, president, commander.
Years when women of the world
Went into the shadow
Of the sexual and reproductive rights charter,
Enforced by the rotting party, president, commander.
The figures of unfreedom foster:
State socialism has given birth to a monster –
The autocratic society
Built on the vestiges
Of the Soviet nomenklatura.
That Ungeheuer is eating us from within,
Without a break or caesura.
I stare into the monster’s eyes – my eyes.
Just look into the mirror and repeat after me:
– There has never been a democracy
In the former second world,
Neither will it be.
You, too, must have read this poem
In your mirror reflection,
Whispering
– Decolonise me gently with your tongue.
You, too, would have written a poem more dangerous,
It would have stung,
It would have shattered and undone
The walls of the Lubyanka castle.
Proud and unmastered,
This poem should have been
A manifesto for the subversive arts.
Yet – it’s a song to democracy, alas.
