One expects it to be dull, and is not disappointed.
Many of the usual pedestrian pleasures
Are absent here, and not having done my homework
In this odd alphabet, I’m at a loss to interpret
Even the few shopfronts that exist. This one, for instance:
What does it sell? Shoes? Newspapers? The cues
Are minimal. But I’m not here to indite one more J’accuse!
Only to spend some time and rubles. I ask no pointed
Questions and try to adopt the ingenuous stance
Of a tourist, which, after all, I am. Whatever pleasures
Mere looking allows I’ll have, and try not to interpret
(Till I’m home) the frowns and snubs of those whose work
Requires them to be impolite. I’ve had to work
At jobs almost as onerous, though I hadn’t their excuse
(No ideology, that is) for rudeness. They interpret
Even my Levi’s as arrogance. How the spy appointed
To tail me must hate Americans: our cash, our pleasures,
The very sneakers on our feet, each an illicit substance
In his eyes, each another hateful instance
Of a world (ours) that rewards Those Who Don’t Work
At the expense (his) of those who do. But pleasures
Of any sort are suspect here. “Mind your P’s and Q’s,”
I was told at the embassy, when I asked to be pointed
The way to the Kremlin, advice I find hard to interpret.
Should an official “visiting poet” have to interpret
Every paranoid enigma? Isn’t a polite resistance
To unthinking hostility my first duty, my appointed
Task? Isn’t it, in point of fact, the “work”
Of a writer to do whatever’s done, to join the queues
For cabbage, drink kvass, and share such pleasures
As are commonly available? I could wish those pleasures
Larger and more various—but I refuse to interpret
The present paucity, the scowls, the ubiquitous queues
As a sign that Russia’s somehow doomed to its stance
Of intransigent ressentiment. The future didn’t work,
But another future can. So, am I totally disappointed?
No. But I wouldn’t want to be appointed attaché. Pleasure’s
Too much work here, and pain’s its pay. I can’t interpret
In these circumstances, war and peace and queues.
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