Rewinding the Russian Museum

After working our way through the Russian Museum of art in St. Petersburg, we had to hurry back past everything we had seen to get to the exit.

    Rewinding the Russian Museum

The 20th century comes to a dead end
just beyond Soviet realism
after we have spent the morning
walking through the previous eight.
Some rooms are closed for refurbishing,
so we have to go back the way we came.

As we quickly reverse chronology
and hurry to lunch, patterns emerge
in what we speed past. Portraits mostly climb
the social ladder – beggar to artist
to merchant to nobles – then also scale
the walls salon style, piles of plump princesses
and dashing dukes. The heroes also change:
Communist infantry give way to charging
cavalry then medieval knights midst
landscapes that gain and lose detail, becoming
more then less then more then less like photographs.

The saints march in and out as well, disguised
as workers and soldiers under Stalin,
cloaked in irony with the avant-garde
then bathed in glorious light until we get
to the 12th century again and golden-haired
angel Gabriel gazing wide-eyed with wonder
and sadness toward all the ages yet to come.