Navalny's Monument

Honouring Alexei Navalny with the poem "The Monument"

By Dimitri E.

In my recent post " Does poetry make nothing happen? I examine the complex relationship between poetry and questions of justice and history from many sides. In this essay, it use two poems of W.H. Auden, and my own award-winning poem "The Monument." My poem is in dialogue with Horace’s “Exegi Monumentum” and a similiar poem by Pushkin. I attempt to rethink and imagine these fine poems for our times, in the attempt to understand the meaning of Navalny's life and death.

You went by snow moaning in many voices.

Black fields of ice merged with starless nights

as griefs bore down like crosses of memory.

The road to Golgotha drones long and bleak.

There’s polar night, evening, then night again.

A prison from the good old gulag days.

With barbed teeth they screamed the biting air.

You died alone surrounded by the dark.

Yet, your monument is more lasting than bronze

and tinseled palaces topped with golden domes.

Neither army nor storms of men can crack

what you have built upon eternal rock. 

Not all of you is dead, the immortal part lives

on, in your deeds, laughs, and in your refrain:

Be not afraid as I am not afraid.

The path you’ve made will never be overgrown 

To those walking dead or smoking darkness

your laugh will mysteriously appear

like some pure breath of innocent air

from the commanding heights of Galilee. 

after Horace’s “Exegi Monumentum” 

"Judge's Choice" Award in Drummond National Poetry Competition, Canada 2024