Circle of the Remembered

Kate Nein Remembers 1917

There were no lilacs blooming
when we left the Volga for Berlin.
We lived five weeks on cabbages
a trainman stole and sold us.
We couldn't leave the train
because the Bolsheviks would shoot us.
Somewhere in Poland we smelled
lilacs through the smell of sickness.
We wept because our world
was shrunk to sickness in a boxcar.
The trainman brought some lilacs.
He gave them to me for a kiss,
and because my hair was coiled
in a yellow bun like his sister's.
I planted lilacs when I came
to live free in this country.
Every May I bring some in
to remember the world is more
than smelling sickness in a boxcar.

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Updated last on:  2001/05/24