ANASTASIA

Oh, defiant winged tempest
in that bloody revolution.
An errant cinder flake
cast from the waging storm.
No majestic hail of gun shot
did befall that sacred child,
Stolen by knight to tender
in a hollow, safe and warm
While seven torched,
divine icons lay forgotten
in a haunted shroud.
Under thickening wood,
succumbed to frenzied madness
and yonder maelstrom.
Escaped,
though the legend
n’er she could.

Is she or isn’t she?
What is my little Romanov?
The fabled antithesis
of Lenin’s swarming nightmare,
buried in a frozen wasteland
never to be crossed?
Renew your phantom suffrage.
Speculations we can not abandon.
Lost to us forever, then,
in the name of Anna Anderson?

She is dead!
She is alive!
Speak in riddled dreams no more.
Her reposing splendor tainted
spawned from lips - the well-trained whore.
Rumors, legends - fester and seep,
the brutal need for false display,
written into public consciousness
through retributions muddy tonal gray.
Clever fiction sweetens all fantastic claims
Though I fear to delve too deeply,
With fleeting hopes, burning bitter
as the truth turned under Siberian snow.