Souvenir, Monument

On a low dusty shelf is a trio 
of Matryoshka dolls bought 
from a sidewalk vendor in Leningrad,  
a stone's throw from the Winter Palace 
where a small crowd had gathered around 
a young bear in chains: fur matted,
eyes glazed over, likely from some 
sedative. Crossing a bridge guarded by four 
stone lions, I entered a small bookstore 
where I found a copy of The Great Gatsby 
in Cyrillic and a blank journal 
with a picture on its cover of the Church 
of the Savior on Spilled Blood— 
its jewel-encrusted onion domes built 
after Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, 
when a bomb was tossed into his carriage.  
In the country where I was born, there are
many sites that pay similar homage 
to the memory of some hero or martyr 
whose blood trickled onto the street, 
whose head landed on a pillow 
of cobblestones, whose legs were torn 
from their torsos when grenades exploded 
during a rally or political debate.  
A souvenir is what you take with you
after you've entered a space you might not
have been able to penetrate, had it not been
for the way foreign invasions opened up
faraway countries to the commerce 
of the world. A monument is what marks
the scene where bodies falling 
swung the pendulum of history, 
or made a thousand compass needles 
tremble violently awake.