Saturday, June 9, 2018

The Life Review of Robin Ludd
By © Anton Vendamencsh, 2017

2 The Story+ of Grandmother

A long time ago
Only the Sun knows
The day
(or whyfores)
Her forebears
Left Gorgan
And sailed
With a boatload
Of ewes and rams
To the north
Of the Caspian Sea

Where
In Astrahan
They took up hay
Then went up the Volga
To its very beginning

And portaged
Wives and all
To the Jaunava* River
That outflows
Into the Baltic Sea
Through the land
Formerly Livonia
now known
As Latvija
    (*Jaunava = Daugava)
Where they found
The Jerusalem
(Jersika)
They had heard of
And sought
Already (by 1209)
Raised to the ground.
By the missionaries
And warriors
Come to rape her
On behalf
Of a story
Full of lies.

    They then
Backtracked
The Ogre River
To its source
Where they
Changed their name
From Gorgan (گرگان)
to Yaariyaan (यारियां)
a name meaning ‘warriors’ in Hindi
a flipped overversionof ‘gendarmerie
or armed Johns, or shepherds with crooks
Pronounced ‘Yuryahn’
In Latvijan,
And hid
In the woods
Next to a lake.

All their neighbors
Were still
Domiciled nomads
Dressed in wolf skins
Herders or gani (Yans)
Of elk, aurochs,
And geese with
Clipped wings.
The sheep (yehri-yaari)
Of the Yaariyaans*
(*A name which
With the aid
Of paraidolia
May also translate
Into Latvijan
As ‘yehru yaanyi’
Shepherds)
Were much welcomed.

No one in Livonia
Was yet a hunter
Of deer or boar
Or a german (skinner)
Of animal pelts.

    Windows were covered
    With bladders of boar
    Not human skins.

Sacrifice of animals
In place of self-sacrifice
By Sacred Kings
Had not yet
Become a ritual
(whence the sacrifice
Of soldiers
In our times)
But was
Of dire necessity.

Life and community
Was still for free.
The notion
Of paying taxes
To justify life
Had not yet
Been heard of.

It is here
That on the banks
Of a brook
Called Na-Luddinya
Aka Na-rodinya
A near thousand
Years later
Grandmother
(Nee Yuryahn) met
Grandfather
And bore them
Five children.

My father
Born 1892
Was the second
Of five.

    As irony
Would have it
His life ended
    On April 13, 1942
    In Astrahan
(~250 mi south by ferry from Stalingrad)
Following the failure
Of Operation Barbarosa,
And a month before
Operation Case Blue was
Scheduled to bear down
On Stalingrad.

His bones and skull
Now bleach or yellow
Somewhere
In the sands
Of the Upper
Volga delta.

Father was spared
Learning about
The murder of
His mother
(or did he suspect it
Nevertheless?).

It was left
For me to tell
The unthinkable.

So, who killed
Grandmother?

    The answer
Heretofore denied:

Her former husband’s
Second wife
My Godmother.

The agent of death
Was greed
(It’s a good guess)
And poison.

One ruined
Milia’s reputation
For ever.
The other stopped
Grandmother’s heart.

The murder
Went undiscovered
Because the Globalizers
The evangelists
Overcome
By City-bred
Idealist zeal
Torn from land
And without anchor
Men turned to steel
The invaders
Were already
at the door
Of God forsaken
Latvija.

    Every one was
    Preoccupied with
    Surviving
The Soviet occupation.
No one had time
To think that
A heart attack
Could also
Spell murder.

Money, money, money
(Made of
Thin paper slips)
Was the reason why
Milia stuck to it
As a wasp drowned
In a glass
Of hot cranberry juice
Sweetened with honey.

As for the other question:
Did Milia kill
grandfather, too?

The evidence?

    He wanted to
    Divorce her
    Because,
(So he said)
    She had become
    Intolerable and
    Was jerking off
    The Latvijan President
    In plain sight
    Of the nation,
By which act
She was making fun
Of him
her husband.

    But he did not
    Divorce her.
He dared not.

Again,
Money, money, money
Milia wanted to flee
The narod of Rus
And Latvija
(Both creations of
Parliamentary democracy)
To her Swiss villa
And needed
All the money
She could gather
For herself.

    Though grandfather
    Was called king
    Of the press
    And claimed to be
    A millionaire
    She, a hussy
In hard times past
held the keys
    To the vault.

When the death threats
Issued by the na-ludd
Dressed up
as factory workers
Reached my father
Through messengers
Yet loyal to Jan Huss

He went to Milia
Hat in hand.

She told him:
Get lost

I have my stepson
Creon
To take care off.

But are you not
Godmother
To my son as well?
Father asked?

Don’t be naïve
Milia answered.
Your mother
Would make me
(When I was
Already a woman
Of twenty-four
And well reamed
By many lovers)
A virgin for yet
Another eighteen years
(Such were then
The divorce laws).

It is Creon
The Austrian
My sister’s son
Who inherits
My fallowed womb.

    He, Creon
    The Austrian’s son
    Not your son
    Is my heir.
    He, Creon,
    Not your father
(the country boy)
Or your son
    I cuddle
    In my bed
When thunder roars.
    Creon will have.
    Yours will not.

Remember when
Robin’s nanny complained
Creon’s brother
Tried to drown him
In the Abava river?
Make of it what you will.
But I did not volunteer
To become Robins
Godmother.


    Your mother
Go fuck ghosts
    In her grave.
    May you all die
    And be buried
    In the wood
At your farm.

You still have
That piece of land
Next to
The Na-ruddinya
Have you not?

It was a prophecy.

My mother
There and then
At the farmstead
where grandmother
was born

    Fucked me
And my father

For the love
Of a young
German officer
Who thereby
Most likely
Not only
Fucked me up
A second time
But saved my life.

Grandfather and
Grandmother
Insulted by murder
No one dared imagine

Taken by surprise
Incredulous
Paved the way for
The glories of memory
(Some true
Some perhaps not)
And turned
In their graves.


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