RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: PUTIN'S RUSSIA
Darya
Darya Kozyreva is nineteen
She loves poetry and yearns for freedom
Darya Kozyreva will spend three years
in the gulag for poetic dissidence
She pasted a verse from a Ukrainian poet *
on his statue in St Petersburg Square:
O bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrant’s blood
The freedom you have gained
It did not use the tyrant’s name
It did not need to
It didn’t mention the war in Ukraine
It was self-evident
Darya Kozyreva was a known dissident
Now she is a known hero
She valued truth over her own freedom
She felt the suffering of her Ukrainian friends
She refused to remain silent
She is one of hundreds in Russian jails
For speaking out against their president
For speaking out against his dirty war
In America we do not imprison dissidents
We detain and deport foreign students
For writing anti-Israeli editorials
In America we find more creative ways
to punish those who criticize the president
and his oppressive policies
We are not Russia but we are on the path
that Putin laid out before us
where dissent is outlawed
and public protest is treason
where even listening to an opposing view
is a punishable offense
* Taras Shevchenko
