paper for a thousand cigarettes.…
So now I’m called Salvation Bill; I teach the Living Law,
And Bally-hoo the Bible with the best;
And if a guy won’t listen — why, I sock him on the jaw,
And preach the Gospel sitting on his chest.
The Ballad of Lenin’s Tomb
This is the yarn he told to me
As we sat in Casey’s Bar,
That Rooshun mug who scrammed from the jug
In the land of the Crimson Star;
That Soveet guy with the single eye,
And the face like a flaming scar.
Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and rat-grey workers wait
To tread the gloom of Lenin’s tomb, where the Comrade lies in state.
With lagging pace they scan his face, so weary yet so firm;
For years a score they’ve laboured sore to save him from the worm.
The Kremlin walls are grimly grey, but Lenin’s Tomb is red,
And pilgrims from the Sour Lands say: “He sleeps and is not dead.”
Before their eyes in peace he lies, a symbol and a sign,
And as they pass that dome of glass they see — a God Divine.
So Doctor’s plug him full of dope, for if he drops to dust,
So will collapse their faith and hope, the whole combine will bust.
But stay, Tovarich; hark to me … a secret I’ll disclose,
For I did see what none did see; I know what no one knows.
I was Cheka terrorist — Oh I served the Soviet’s well,
Till they put me down on the bone-yard list, for the fear that I might tell;
That I might tell the things I saw, and that only I did see,
They held me in quod with a firing squad to make a corpse of me.
But I got away, and here today I’m telling my tale to you;
Though it may sound weird, by Lenin’s beard, so help me God it’s true.
I slouched across the great Red Square, and watched the waiting line.
The mongrel sons of Marx were there, convened to Lenin’s shrine;
Ten thousand men of Muscovy, Mongol and Turkoman,
Black bonnets of the Aral Sea and Tatars of Kazan.
Kalmuck and Bashkir, Lett and Finn, Georgian, Jew and Lapp,
Kirghiz and Kazakh, crowding in to gaze at Lenin’s map.
Aye, though a score of years had run I saw them pause and pray,
As mourners at the Tomb of one who died but yesterday.
I watched them in a bleary daze of bitterness and pain,
For oh, I missed the cheery blaze of vodka in my brain.
I stared, my eyes were hypnotized by the saturnine host,
When with a start that shook my heart I saw — I saw a ghost.
As in foggèd glass I saw him pass, and peer at me and grin —
A man I knew, a man I slew, Prince Boris Mazarin.
Now do not think because I drink I love the flowing bowl;
But liquor kills remorse and stills the anguish of the soul.
And there’s so much I would forget, stark horrors I have seen,
Faces and forms that haunt me yet, like shadows on a screen.
And of these sights that mar my nights the ghastliest by far
Is the death of Boris Mazarin, that soldier of the Czar.
A mighty nobleman was he; we took him by surprise;
His mother, son and daughters three we slew before his eyes.
We tortured him, with jibes and threats; then mad for glut of gore,
Upon our reeking bayonets we nailed him to the door.
But he defied us to the last, crying: “O carrion crew!
I’d die with joy could I destroy a hundred dogs like you.”
I thrust my sword into this throat; the blade was gay with blood;
We flung him to his castle moat, and stamped him in its mud.
That mighty Cossack of the Don was dead with all his race.…
And now I saw him coming on, dire vengeance in his face.
(Or was it some fantastic dream of my besotted brain?)
He looked at me with eyes a-gleam, the man whom I had slain.
He looked and bade me follow him; I could not help but go;
I joined the throng that passed along, so sorrowful and slow.
I followed with a sense of doom that shadow gaunt and grim;
Into the bowels of the Tomb I followed, followed him.
The light within was weird and dim, and icy cold the air;
My brow was wet with bitter sweat, I stumbled on the stair.
I tried to cry; my throat was dry; I sought to grip his arm;
For well I knew this man I slew was there to do us harm.
Lo! he was walking by my side, his fingers clutched my own,
This man I knew so well had died, his hand was naked bone
His face was like a skull, his eyes were caverns of decay …
And so we came to the crystal frame where lonely Lenin lay.
Without a sound we shuffled round. I sought to make a sign,
But like a vice his hand of ice was biting into mine.
With leaden pace around the place where Lenin lies at rest,
We slouched, I saw his bony claw go fumbling to his breast.
With ghastly grin he groped within, and tore his robe apart,
And from the hollow of his ribs he drew his blackened heart.…
Ah no! Oh God! A bomb, a BOMB! And as I shrieked with dread,
With fiendish cry he raised it high, and … swung at Lenin’s head.
Oh I was blinded by the flash and deafened by the roar,
And in a mess of bloody mash I wallowed on the floor.
Then Alps of darkness on me fell, and when I saw again
The leprous light ’twas in a cell, and I was racked with pain;
The ringèd round by shapes of gloom, who hoped that I would die;
For of the crowd that crammed the Tomb the sole to live was I.
They told me I had dreamed a dream that must not be revealed,
But by their eyes of evil gleam I knew my doom was sealed.
I need not tell how from my cell in Lubianka gaol,
I broke away, but listen, here’s the point of all my tale …
Outside the “Gay Pay Oo” none knew of that grim scene of gore;
They closed the Tomb, and then they threw it open as before.
And there was Lenin, stiff and