THANK YOU, MOSCOW Poems of observation of a life in Russia DARREN BLANCHARD Copyright © 2018 Darren Blanchard All rights reserved. Self-published by Darren Blanchard Cover photograph ‘Moscow Yard’ © Darren Blanchard
CONTENTS
Dedication
Algorithm Perfected
Can’t Take Change
Flag
History is Not Science
Inhuman Machine
Just a Mushroom in the Sun
Perfect Grass
Simply Yours
So Very Clear
Thank You, Moscow
They Closed Detsky Mir
Too Easy
Unconfined
You Got What You Got
You Lost Your Why
Thank You, Moscow – Dedication
Although the poem ‘Thank You, Moscow’ was written in 2015, it appears to have become an eulogy to my years in Russia, which I left in 2021. The title conveniently packages the compositions into a theme, if not all, about Russia, then sentiments shaped by my time in Russia.
Thank you, Moscow, and all the remarkable characters I met there, who changed me for better or worse, from the unwitting 25-year-old who arrived at Sheremetyevo back in March 1992.
Of all the extraordinary characters I met in half a lifetime there, none were more distinguished and influential than my best friend, John Roche (1949-2015)—a man with an almost clinical obsessiveness for fairness to everyone. Unkindness or egoism were the few things that made him irate. Amongst papers he had left me to look after for him, I found a note scribbled:
‘Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see.’ Confucius
I dedicate this collection to John, who found a great deal of beauty in Moscow, particularly in its people.