A thousand words

What circuitous routes we pursued in our innocent sight-seeing,   
How vast the meander of the stone Hermitage which holds   
A pictorial history of pillaged Europe, where the fat, satisfied   
Intelligent bust of the Holstein Messalina smirks from its pedestal,   
As at Tsarskoe Selo, which the present regime calls Pushkin.   
There, amid monumental, autumnal ruin, in a neo-gothic folly,
Lunching on lard, I learned the Russian word for cosy,
Oiutny: neither Pavlovsk, that meticulously restored memorial to filial resentment
Nor Peterhof’s post-war proletarian Renaissance trick pavilions quite qualify.   
I go on like a guidebook, there being none such.
Nowhere could we find a Russian-English, English-Russian dictionary   
Or maps less rudimentary than those of a vanished century.
Lies appropriately describe this sequestrated Czarist capital founded on water,   
Edifice of pure will and an idea, double-glazed window
Closed on the West. The past lingers along the Neva
Like a revisionist prince: pink, green, ochre, robin’s-egg-blue
Italianate confectionery on a Scythian scale. You wanted to know   
Why all foreigners are so fascinated by palaces and churches
Used as cinemas and baths? Our taste is counter-revolutionary.
Just fancy playing Soviet monopoly or enduring social-realist monotony!   
And having nothing to read but Lenin and Jack London
Unless in samizdat! I am unable to appreciate a solitary
Line of Russian verse in translation, from Bogan to Brodski.
Although, like Leningrad at the same time fantastic and prosaic,   
Your novels form a sort of exotic province of English,
I don’t know why, inimitable Pushkin is a noted bore.