The Hermitage

Winter Palace From Palace Square
The Hermitage Museum
Petrograd (St Petersburg), Russia

baroque bones
bore imperial monarchs
in sumptuous splendor
abreast of red omens
blown in from their
cold Baltic exile
rococo foreshadowings
cast in deep snows
where two centuries
seethed with gestation
of bleak sensibilities
one winter palace with
rooms enough handy
for two hundred million
their hearts and minds
held in a cadre of hands
representing a virulent
small ideology bent on
replacing old tyranny
seizing their moment
to storm these gilt halls
giving usher to era
more brutal than any
past czarist regime

now preserved in this
overwrought coffin of
strident extravagance
hangs the great artwork
the eminent product of
painters whose impulses
never fell subject to
ruthless foul credo or king
perhaps causing both
Lenin and Catherine
to twist and to turn
in their moldering
contrary graves