The Saga Of Nazedha, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Et Al Why They Memorized Osip Mandelstam's Poems, The Gulag Poem by Leialoha Apo Perkins

Who knows what insects Mandelstam kissed, blessing,
before eating them? (What he drank to down it all?)
What he ate: Ants with their delicate air, sleek black
body parts, snipped waist, massive heads eyeing who, what, there?
Flies, their fine iridescent wings, odor ferreting suckers, sticky legs?
The grey bellied Water-Bugs, their pouch tannic juiced like common drunks?
Centipedes. - their brittle columnar legs engineering plenty?
Or when dreaming big game - Tiger meat, or Fox, rare as a Tungaluska?
A Cockroach was choice – when figured in art as moustache, a mask
For oracles and disasters. All tiny creatures lived close as hair shirt, as hope.

Remember the Mediaeval Monsters of the Great Ocean
Lore – Beasts that gorged men and sailing ships alike?
The great discoverers’ and geographers’ tales were dispatched
in charts and on maps incredible, unbelievable, even insane.
That Age of Faith was vulnerable to Beastly Tales, Sacrifice,
Redemption, the Goodness of God, risks of Loving, going to Hell.
In Russia, the Silver Age of Poetry held Good, Evil, a smile, laughter
flying in the teeth of the great Church Slavonika, Tolstoy, jubilation
after the Battle of Borodino won, scored in Tschaikovsky’s War,1812.
Mandelstam never untold the truth.
It was not for want of food, not from the cold, not for need of water,
not from a weak heart, not because “mad, ” not from a poem
composed by mistake, not for poetry - that Mandelstam died.
“I am not meant for prison! ” he cried out, enraged. Aye. Is any man?