Observations placeholder
Lowell, Robert - And now the requiem hour has come
Identifier
000990
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
From Daily Mail Online [the power of propaganda]
The despot, who executed and imprisoned millions of people, narrowly missed the top spot by 5,500 votes in the contest inspired by the BBC’s Greatest Britons.
More than a third of the country’s 143million population voted in the Name of Russia series, which crowned medieval war hero Alexander Nevsky who stopped invading Germans.
In second place came Pyotr Stolypin, the last tsar’s prime minister, who was assassinated amid a massive reform programme aimed at calming a growing Leftist rebellion in the early 20th century.
And despite the purges, deportations and Siberian Gulag labour camps that killed more than 20million of his own people, Stalin managed to carry third place.
A description of the experience
From Epilogue - Robert Lowell
And now the requiem hour has come
I see you, hear you, feel you. Some
Marched to their deaths in cheering ranks
Others have faded into blanks.
Some, coming to Siberia, said,
‘Why worry, this is home at last’.
Some lived, I’d write their names in red
Forever, but the list is lost.
I’ve made a sort of elegy
Drawn from the scattered words they spoke
Braced for the terror’s second stroke
Now and always, I hear their cry.
Tomorrow’s the memorial day,
A hundred million people pray
Through my tired mouth and lethargy
‘Remember me, remember me’.