Tyotya Maria

Tyotya Maria
You look so sweet
With your wilted flowers,
Your dyed-red hair,
And your tired eyes.

But you charged me 200 roubles* for those flowers
And in giving me change
You claimed you were 50 short
And refused to give me the note I could see
bulging in your purse.

So dies all high-minded Slavophilism.
Tolstoy would understand.
Dollars and Euros vs the Russian Soul.
And I try to explain to my own babushka
About the flowers.


*£4!!