The Carter,
the Convicts, and the Railway
“See
all those workers digging through that hill?”
The
carter asked, there pointing with his whip
While
two mismatched old horses lumbered on
Jerking
carter and prisoners along the ruts.
An
empty church, its now skeletal dome
Open
to the dusk, lay somewhat in the way
Of
where the rails would lay, just there among
Stray
stalks of wheat, from lost and windblown seeds.
One
prisoner yawning through his sorrows said
“I
wonder why the Czar didn’t send me
there
To
carve with pick and shovel and barrow and hod
His
new technology across the steppes.”
“Too
close to Petersburg, and Moscow too,
My
lad. The Czar wants you to labor far,
Far
off. No mischief from you and your
books,
Your
poems, your nasty little magazines.”
“Oh,
carter, is Pushkin unknown to you?
Turgenev,
Gogol, Dostoyevsky too?
What
stories do you tell your children, then?
Do
you teach them to love their Russian letters?”
The
carter laughed; he lit his pipe and said
“You
intellectuals! Living in the past!
Education
for the 19th century -
That’s
what our children need, not your old books.”
“Someday,”
the carter mused, “railways everywhere,
And
steel will take you where you will be sent.
Electric
light will make midday of night
And
Russia’s soul will be great big machines!”
“Machines,
and better guns, and better clocks -
All
these will make for better men, you’ll see.
You
young fellows will live to see it; I won’t,
But
what a happy land your Russia will be!”
And
the cart rattled on, the horses tired,
Longing
for the day’s end, and hay, and rest;
The
prisoners made old jokes in laughing rhymes,
Begged
‘baccy from the carter, and wondered.
