Last Voyage of the Sholokhov

By Jim Provencher

She was a scow really, a defunct dinosaur
of the sealanes, shipping out of Vladivostock
supplying quick cash flow for the Mother Country
when the West had won and things were slow.
An odd mix, the motley crew and cheap-fare
cruise customers, the classic ship of fools
buying into the lucrative Pacific market.

You might wonder about safety, the creep
of rust, buckling and bubbling a fresh coat
of Potemkin paint, shaling off in eggshell shards.
Lifeboats hang cocooned, forgotten husks
suspended in an old spider’s web, deathboats
jigsawed with cracks and puttied fissures.

The stern was largely a leaky hatch door
for really the Sholokov was a vehicular ferry
designed to monotonously ply the Sea of Okhotst.
The hold then was a vast empty parking garage
now a makeshift museum housing bucolic pastorals
non-Kandinsky samples of the regime’s realist school.
In the middle hung a giant portrait of Stalin.
Hanged, rather, for the gesture suggested
a lynching, an obviously satiric effigy.
We finally got him where he belongs,
the tour guide chortled, curbing a bitter laugh.
Fast-fish passengers in thrall, we nodded assent
to this revisionist version of history and smelled
the liberal smears of gobbed grease easing
the pistoned passage to New Caledonia.

At obligatory Cocktails, the stern grey-bearded Captain
said this sailing was a hard whale-road, always upwind
no matter which way we tacked. So skoal another vodka.
And another, for the corridors were patrolled
by waiters bearing huge trays of rainbow displays
of vodka shot glasses—red, green, yellow, clear, and blue.
Soon you didn’t know which way was up or
mind the endless rocking so, a revolutionary placebo!

We anchored our landlubber trust in Captain Greybeard.
His new stainless-steel heart ticked away through the night
as we floated like moonlight over the waves.
Rough passage and queasy guests hunkered in their bunks.
Buoyed in a vodka haze, the persevering few
arrived on time for dining room meals.
They were greeted with cold soups
and Russian ryes, wholesome homecooking served up
by cheery-eyed, apple-cheeked waitresses
who spoke five languages, including impeccable English
and held advanced degrees in literature and philosophy.
We’re working off school fee debts to the State
ours declared:  But what I don’t understand is why
people like you take make-believe journeys to nowhere?