(A small tribute poem I wrote, the morning I heard Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had died. I first read The Gulag Archipelago in high school and thought it the most eye-opening book I'd ever read about man's inhumanity to man and the eventual result of Communism. A writer so talented that there exists a invisible calibre with his initials on it.)
O', rebel of the desperate cause
whom fled Mars' straining grip;
Whom worked loose hope from iron
On ice flew fight to freedom.
Perchance to view your own return,
Once, twice fleeing your shores
For, the Gulag did repeat itself on you.
Yet, through the cracks of cement and snow
Inspiration leaked out amid the houses;
Hot blood did with you write
And tears...
The great blight to rid from your land.
Remembered are the strivings;
Pleading soft and wept,
Penned and shouted.
Atrocity housed and trapped
And in the end, the Hammer routed,
To but be harkened with bile and bite.
You endured to taste the open,
Though slight with sickness
And scarred by the gaping, ruined gate.
See there, it stands destroyed.
A testament of those hid and plundered.
Oh, noble sir... know we see it still.
Twill never be re-built, nor honored.
And 'round it stack your warning tomes;
Glowing brands of warmth and woe.
Meredith Greene
