“A coin for Charon, new shoes for the road.”
So, the Museum guide says, Romans blessed
Their dead away. “Sound logic”, he opines,
“For those whose Empire’s heart was the Golden Milestone!”
(Though Merlin, Otherworldly wise, knew better:
The rough-spliced sandal-strap would serve the boy
An hour and all eternity…)
But Christians need no offering of shoes;
(Angels in icons glide on stocking-feet),
Dante through death’s three kingdoms, Bedford John,
Or Inkling Jack – none (if my memory serves)
Speaks of the Pilgrim’s need for sturdy footwear.
Only the barefoot dream a well-shod heaven;
Plantation slaves hymned golden slippers; prattling
Of scarlet boots, Avvakum’s young disciples
Joyfully leapt into the fire…
Yet, viewing Roman death-shoes (simulated
From nailmarks in the clay) my mind returns
To the dead of Kurapaty – Windflower Hill –
Where beneath pines, among the bones and bullets,
So many shoes survived the march to death,
So many to be listed: peasant “walkers”,
Gumboots made from old tyres, elegant
Feminine pantoufles, sturdy city lace-ups,
A gym-shoe trademarked “Riga”… Cleaned and counted,
Not for museums (“Footwear, nineteen-thirties,
Mid-Stalin-era”), not to identify
The dead by name (though some, they say, have found
Relics there of their kin) only to seek
Not who they were, but what, what kind, what genus
Of people perished there… And toiling through
My long translation-task, and coining terms
Where English had none, I found but one answer:
Peasant and scholar, poet, clerk and worker –
All trades, all grades of life lie in those finds
Of lasting leather… Do not send to find
For whom the bell tolls, Master Donne; ask rather
Whom the shoe fits! For snugly it fits thee,
And him and her and ye… and, likewise, me…
Gold trophy winner
Silver trophy winner
Honorable mention
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