Fortuitous Poem by Nikolai Gogol

After the trip he had made,
He felt great fatigue.

Having asked for a very light supper,
Consisting only of suckling pig,
He straightaway got undressed and,
Slipping under the blanket,
Felt asleep soundly, deeply,
Felt asleep in the wondrous way
That they alone sleep
Who are so fortunate
As to know nothing of
Hemorrhoids,
Or fleas,
Or overly powerful mental abilities.

Seacocks—The Unsung Heroes

I spent the morning
Reading political blogs—
Written by angry people
Calling each other
Loathsome names.

I’m not proud of it;
Shamed, if anything¸
But the thing is that
Once I start, I can’t stop.

But I had a medical appointment
And had to stop and go and pay
Tribute to the medical profession
By waiting my time in a small room
Full of old magazines.

“Wooden Boats—The Magazine
For Wooden Boat Owners, Builders and Designers”
Was left behind on a seat next to mine.

The cover story was on seacocks--
The unsung heroes of watertight integrity.

I have never heard of seacocks
But watertight integrity
Sounded important
And so I started to read.

You see, the seacocks are the valves
That can stem the flow of raw water
In through-hull fittings.

I didn’t know about through—hull fittings
But come to think about it
Since they go through the hull
Everyone would agree that
That you should have seacocks to
To keep the boat from sinking.

What a luxury:
A real problem
With a simple solution.

Homer’s Mistakes in “Odyssey”

From an autobiography of a Polish writer,
An anecdote about a friend of his
Who, after the partition of Poland in 1939
Between the Nazi Germany and Soviet Union,
Found himself in a Soviet prison in Lvov.

The cell was full of Ukrainians,
Some nationalists, some criminals,
Who first robed the lone Pole of his
Middle-class, lice-free clothes
And then demanded that he tell them stories
To keep them from fighting each other.

And so, over several days, the story was told:
Of “When the king of an island called Ithaca
Was abroad besieging a big city on the coast
Of Asia Minor called Troy…” and when he finished,
He was told to repeat the story all over again
But this time slowly and without mistakes.

Clearly, King Odys was Ukrainian
And Scylla and Charybdis did not live near Italy
But in the waterfalls and rapids of the river Dnieper
And surely there must have been some
Traitorous Stalinist Russians
Among those who wanted to fuck King Odys’s wife.

Central Committee Christmas Tree

After '56,
When the Party decided to draw a line
Behind its Stalinist past,
It rehabilitated some of its victims,
Expelled some its judicial murderers,
And undertook to strengthen its links
With the working class;
It also allowed a Christmas tree
In the Central Committee building.

Comrades explained that
The Catholic Church remained
A reactionary force allied
With imperialist and revanchist circles
And that the tree wasn't even Christian
Having originated in pagan times.

Connoisseurs of irony enjoyed the spectacle
Of a soi-disant progressive party
Reaching out to pagan beliefs.

Cynics recognized the claim
That the Church stole it from the pagans
And the Party will steal from the Church.