01-04-2023, 09:19 AM
The Spark
1878: Vera Zasulich, aged 29
brought down General Trepov
with a British Bulldog revolver,
fleeing to Switzerland
she lived on cigarettes and mustard
grew ragged and lean
“a heretic…a shrewdly feminine mind
working by intuitive impulses and flashes”
translating Marx into Russian
arguing and flinging ashes
in every direction as she made her mosaics
of words for rebellious action.
Recognized early Lenin’s “bull dog bite”.
died of pneumonia in Petrograd at 70
as 1919 gave birth to the Red Terror.
“A curious person,
and a curiously attractive one”
said Trotsky, who, aged 24, had received
some of those cigarette ashes
amid the smokey forum of a den
where a tiny cabal of the hunted
gathered to debate the fate of a nation
of one hundred million.
1878: Vera Zasulich, aged 29
brought down General Trepov
with a British Bulldog revolver,
fleeing to Switzerland
she lived on cigarettes and mustard
grew ragged and lean
“a heretic…a shrewdly feminine mind
working by intuitive impulses and flashes”
translating Marx into Russian
arguing and flinging ashes
in every direction as she made her mosaics
of words for rebellious action.
Recognized early Lenin’s “bull dog bite”.
died of pneumonia in Petrograd at 70
as 1919 gave birth to the Red Terror.
“A curious person,
and a curiously attractive one”
said Trotsky, who, aged 24, had received
some of those cigarette ashes
amid the smokey forum of a den
where a tiny cabal of the hunted
gathered to debate the fate of a nation
of one hundred million.