Ashes of Our Time (revision 3)

[RC James]

"You’ll see my body, ages past,"   (who is this ages past person?)

This reads as though ages past will see your body.
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drawn to itself in strident winds, (how can something be drawn to itself?)
at the center of the raging
conflagration we called ours.  (I really get little image out of this)

When I start down the avenue
lined with our history's truth,
I trust that you will guard with
care the ashes I can't claim. (tense)
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The obvious difference in line length creates disruption to the poem, thus weakens it. It would be very easy to keep to the same general line length.

"Survivors, now in different corners unknown, nurse the memories we felt then.
("Survivors, now in different corners unknown,
nurse the memories we felt then.")
("Then" is redundant.)
Weather now holds promises,(while) the dank cells held none,(holding) only sweat (and) congealed blood.
When you look at the moon you look into the future we did not have. (How does this connect? How does the moon show the future?)
Let the moon illuminate your way to sun swept field, (how can that happen)



You have so many questions, questions only you yourself can answer, for me they're answered.  your 
approach is quite rigid. RC

























a calm sea welcome (to) you. (or a calm sea welcomes you)

Remember metal on metal before we were fully awake(?)
there in the sodden keep, the thud and crunch, threnody (this word seems pretentious should be preceded by an object)
of soldiers’ boots, shouts, and cries of the tortured.

Black Marias careened with their human load (They actually didn't careen with their human load any more than they danced with their human load), we met
to console each other, understanding that Russian speech
was our only true homeland. Dementia thrived in our suffering.

Only the corpses smiled, (colon) frozen grins, chains finally unfastened;
our proud Russia could do nothing but writhe under the Jack-boots.

I am working on the annhiliation(sic) of all emotion. I am weaving a dark shawl
to protect our memories. I remember the words you all spoke, behind bars,
out of desolation, just as I have remembered your faces and movements.

I will remember this forever, even through new sorrows, it will be there,
for me to return to when I want to summon you, my dearest friends;
together you moan and scream through my mind.

Erect my monument not anywhere nowhere  near the sea nor in Litenyi,
but there in front of the steel doors where I stood
for hundreds of hours and no one slid open the bolt,

where the shrill cries of an old woman still echo through us.
I will welcome the ships coming up the Neva.
The Russian word escaped from captivity will last forever. "

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This poem presumes that the reader has a lot of information that he probably doesn't have and thus narrows the scope of the readership. The writer could put more explanatory passages throughout the poem, or possible a synoptic footnote at the end to make the poem more accessible. 

Although still full of the usual Russian depression, this seems to step outside the usual themes, so there is a possible freshness which could be enhanced, raising this above the usual unending of many Russian works.

Best,

dale