Mother Russia

Good morning mother Russia
Moscow's over eight hundred and fifty years old
Bless bleak St Petersburg, the venice of the North
This rainy day your population soars to one hundred and forty five million

Your proud nation covers one eighth of the lands of the globe
And your river Neva is the deepest in Europe
Your hero Lenin lies embalmed forever on Red Square
Prying visitors view him through a pellucid glass box

Comrade Lenin was born to a prosperous family
Beside the surging blue river Volga in good old eighteen seventy
His father an affluent inspector
Grandfather a doctor

Lenin you were destined for greatness
Living your opulent youth in Simbirsk city
You studied law, but not for long
Joining revolutionary groups at Kazan

Your enthusiastic interest in the writings of Karl Marx
Then calamity came a callin'
Your brother Alexandre was arrested and hanged
He'd plotted to assassinate the Emperor

Is this what turned you into a radical?
I wonder did you sit in your flat
As you often did
Dreaming of the old days?

When you and Alexandre played along the Volga's banks
I know where your heart was
Sitting in the family library, at the old columned house
Reading Shakespeare as Alexandre read Tolstoy

Both of you reflected in the old gold rimmed mirror
I know you, though i never met you
Eighteen ninety seven saw you exiled to Siberia
Where you married a revolutionary friend

Nineteen hundred, your newspaper 'The Spark' shone it's light to many
Spreading the Marxist ideas your soul craved for so deeply
Yearning, pursuing, Marxism is what made you tick
Political leader and a determined character

In nineteen seventeen you led the Bolshevik revolution
You founded the Russian communist party
You taught us that the goal of Socialism is Communism
That a lie often told becomes the truth

And crime is a product of social excess
First head of the U.S.S.R., we salute your determination
You were a truly great political leader
Great men have great hearts

How deep did yours go?
What unfathomable depths made you what you are?
The loss of a sister aged nineteen?
The loss of both father and one of three brothers?

Your heart mourned
You were as deep as a well
A Marxist well that provided your drive
Oh yes i think so

Reading Karl Marx by the light of that lonesome candle
You greatness running to bottomless depths
You reigned until nineteen twenty four
Sleep now in peace great Russian

May your spirit gush freely like the beautiful Volga