Anna Politkovskaya

By Shane Frampton

*Anna, one of Russia’s most fearless journalists, was gunned down in Moscow in the fall of 2006—on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s birthday.*

The drunkards line the streets

The orphaned starve

And men, once soldiers

But now poor, lame shells

Live in the fatally cold alleyways.

Willfully ignorant or uniformed, the result is the same.

Some say I’m the last of a dying breed.

He came, and with him, hope

Or so the beggars my people have become thought.

Shadows stir behind the Russian Parliament.

Who will reveal it? I must.

Some say I’m the last of a dying breed.

The elections draw near.

Some don’t agree with Vladimir.

Into incarceration they go.

And I? Perhaps offered wealth

Will change my mind?

It is not so.

Putin is a shameless liar

And I; Perhaps

I am the last of a dying breed.

Moscow- a party is raging

Thousands of rubles for the oligarch’s amusement

Just outside the stony building’s warmth

Lay soldiers

Fighting for the Russian glory

Against the numbing, life-robbing Russian winter.

I speak out against this, because

I am the last of a dying breed.

Terrorist attacks strike yet again,

They seem asfrequent as the daily paper.

Could it be that they are just as controlled?

It is so.

Some speculate.

I know.

And I will speak it from the roof tops

Because I am the last of a dying breed.

I have children. I have a family.

Each day I run the risk of losing them,

Each day they see their mother risk never returning home.

But I cannot stand by as freedom dies

Under the banner of democracy

in Putin’s Russia.

Perhaps I am the last of a dying breed.

Some take comfort in the media’s optimistic forecast.

I know better.

The police brutality will indefinitely escalate

Because terror and law wear the same badge

In Putin’s Russia.

But there is an easier way in apathy for us

Its cost is only the lives of our grandchildren.

I refuse this way, and someday

This will all end badly, and I will pay.

I am the last of a dying breed.

Our media

Once the voice of the people

Once a voice of reason

Once arrayed against a communist regime

Now as a war hero

Celebrates Stalin

And those too young to know

The error of this way

Will make this error their way.

But I will not, for

I am the last of a dying breed.

I have gone toe to toe in the dark alley

With murderous, deranged warlords

And I share the voice of truth and reason

But only time can tell-

Will my words continue to fall on the ears

Of the drunkenly, fearfully apathetic?

Will I set my people free with truth?

Will anyone continue on in the cause

Of illuminating the dark, shadowy alleyways

Of Putin’s Russia?

Or could it truly be that

I am the last of a dying breed?