After the brilliance of
Gomme I've turned to the mordant Ukrainian verse quoted in Timothy Snyder's
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (London: Bodley Head 2010) -
Father Stalin, look at this
Collective farming is just bliss
The hut's in ruins, the barn's all sagged
All the horses broken nags
And on the hut a hammer and sickle
And in the hut death and famine
No cows left, no pigs at all
Just your picture on the wall
Daddy and mummy are in the kolkhoz
The poor child cries as alone he goes
There's no bread and there's no fat
the Party's ended all of that
Seek not the gentle nor the mild
A father's eaten his own child
The Party man he beats and stamps
And sends us to Siberian camps.