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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “a Mad Escape” cc&d (v255) (the May/June 2015 22 year anniversary issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Salvation (issues edition) the cc&d Jan. - June 2015 collection book		get the 318 page Jan. - June 2015 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

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enjoy this I.B. Rad writing in the free 2015 PDF file chapbook: Dancing at the Abyss (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)				You can also order this as a 2015 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the book cover to order Dancing at the Abyss as a book at any time!

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Letter to Natalya Gorbanevskaya

I.B. Rad

Thirty years ago
I discovered that rare force
of your banned poetry
only learning later
you’d demonstrated against
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
and that disclosing protester prosecution
landed you in a psychiatric hospital,
resolved at length
by emigration.

Then, ever so much later,
communism fell

Well now, since those heady days,
you’d be appalled to find
history’s gone full circle
with Vladimir Putin
gnawing on Ukraine
like a dog on a bone,
claiming it’s because
that bone’s stuck
in mother Russia’s craw,
with democracy and liberty
an elusive rabbit in a hat,
vanishing at a wave
of the conjurer’s paw.
But then, as you’d already written,
“the way of penitence,
like the path of sin,
is never-ending”*

 

* Natalya Gorbanevskaya (1936 - 2013) was a choice Russian poet that the author first met through the book, “Russia’s Underground Poets”, pub. 1969. The ending lines of this poem were taken from an article in “Modern Poetry in Translation” written by Yury Kublanovsky, translated by Daniel Weissbort. A sampling of N. Gorbanevskaya’s poetry, translated into English, is available on the internet.

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