Pushkin’s Merry-Go-Round
Sonnet © 2020 Matthew de Lacey Davidson
When an autocrat shall take a lover,
society’s seduced and then beguiled.
Enamoured, all the people soon discover
that their faithfulness becomes reviled.
Eventually, though, it’s superseded,
when the “Needer” then becomes the “Needed,”
because destruction doesn’t make much sense
when there isn’t any recompense.
Is that which does not kill, so sure to make us tougher?
If all that’s shown is just a second face,
how often does the Hydra’s head replace,
in this land which G-d had meant to suffer?
When duelling ends, or where it all begins,
the tyrant (almost always) wins.
The above is an adaptation of the plot of Eugene Onegin to the political situation in many countries, and uses Pushkin’s sonnet format from that work.
