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?