BLACK SHEEP

Because she was a native of the town
Of Posvol, local byword for its thieves,
My father was reluctant to track down
His mother's relatives--no tainted leaves

Should hang upon the Silbert family tree!
And yet two of her cousins had been jailed
For having fought the Tsar's autocracy
In Nineteen Five, the Year of Hope that failed.

Deported to hard labour in the taiga
(But first the Cossacks brought them home in chains
And flogged them through the streets with a nagaika),

They fade into a world of prison trains,
Cells, work details. I'm proud that we're related:
They stood and fought--the Silberts emigrated.

 

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