I dreamt of Perm

A characteristic feature of overvalued ideas is the patient's conviction of his own rectitude, an obsession with asserting his trampled "rights' and the significance of these feelings for the patient's personality.  They tend to exploit judicial proceedings as a platform for making speeches and appeals

Description of characteristics of 'sluggish schizophrenia' displayed by dissidents committed to psikhushkas during the Soviet period in Russia.  Quoted in Gulag: a history by Anne Applebaum.

I am not sure I entirely understood the details of the political situation when I wrote this poem on April 7, 1980.  I had certainly read my Solzhenitsyn and harbored no illusions concerning the Soviet Union, in spite of my leftist leanings.  More to the point, in this poem, I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a country where you were declared mentally ill because you disagreed with the government. . . . hmm . . . . yeah, about that.  I also tried to consider what it would be like to be under systematic torture, the agony of waiting your turn and knowing it was coming.  The first part is the prisoner, obviously, the second part is me. Vladimir Borisov was, I believe, an electrician.  Hardly a literary figure or intelligentsia.  The final line? Oh please, do you not know me at all? Irony and an ice pick in Mexico City.


I dreamt of Perm
                              for Vladimir Borisov

1.
I swear I will not piss my pants 
again, no matter how scared or blind.
I wait and wait and wait; building castles
room by room inside my mind. Surely
I am still sane, still whole, still in control?
I wait here in this psikhushka
until the clicking steps stop before my door.
Then, with tremors in my bowels and ice knives 
in my heart, quivering, I am led below.


I still remember flowers and Spring
and laughing children and long, slow walks
along the river at dusk.  I remember
sunny rooms, hot tea and the steamy smell
of food, long ago eaten and gone.  I remember
love and softness and tender words and 
whispers and giggles.  I remember living.


Shocks run through me-
seared flesh and frozen heart-
tearless weeping desperation
melts into a jerking mass
Final saving lapse -
                              unconscious weight.


2.
I dreamt of Perm last night, of labor camps,
of last pleading goodbyes
in stinking, smoky railway stations;
Waiting and shuffling in the snow
or rain
or sleet
or beneath the muddy sky.


Remember
and do not lose faith in the future,
For truth, not lies,
is the motor force of progress.

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