Saturday, December 24, 2022

RUSSIA, REMOVED

by Suzanne Morris


Source: Wikipedia


I am typewriting my version
of the recipe for Coulibiac.

This hearty main dish has
endured since the 17th century

and requires a long list
of ingredients that

I must divide by half
whenever I prepare it, for

it makes enough to feed
a family of Russian peasants

after a long day of laboring
in the fields.

A customized version at hand
will save time as I spread

a rectangle of dough with
salmon, rice, boiled egg slices

and sauce redolent of scallions and
mushrooms and tarragon

then top with another sheet of dough,
seal the edges, glaze with raw egg

and bake the plump mound
to golden brown perfection.

In a flood of sympathy for the
valiant people of Ukraine,

I feel I should omit the note on the
origins of Coulibiac.

Then I remember how it
saddened me when

Ukrainians stripped the
names of

19th century literary giants
such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

from street signs, parks,
and public squares:
 
Weren’t they overlooking the
deep sense of moral justice

that flowed from the pens of
these Russian novelists,

as warming to the
human heart

as a fire in the hearth
on a snowbound winter’s eve?

Who is to say they would not be
wielding their pens today

to tell the truth of
the evil being done

in their country’s name, and
warn of the dire consequences?

...the worm gnaws the cabbage,
but dies before he’s done...*


*Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2007.    


Suzanne Morris is a novelist and a poet.  Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, and in journals including The New Verse NewsThe Texas Poetry Assignment, The Pine Cone Review, Stone Quarterly, and Emblazoned Soul Review