And from Penny McCarthy:

Dear List (this may not be Nabokovian enough to be accepted for the list, but I’ll offer it),

                        I published this in Ambit poetry magazine years ago, inspired by a strange fact reported in the British press a few months after Andropov's election: almost all British school-children could identify Andropov by name, whereas a tiny proportion could recognize the name of any British or European statesman.

 

 

Skipping rhyme

 

 

 

 

                                    Andropov

                                    hands drop off

                                    your name will live for ever on the lips of

                                    kids who know

                                    nothing of your 5-year plan

                                    life as a Party man

                                    your K.G.B.

                                    SALT III

                                    Comecons, Cominterns, SS20's

                                    but

                                                who've

                                                            heard

 

 

 

 

                                    one word - 'Andropov'

                                    Why?  "'Cos 'is 'ands drop off!"

 

                                    And so

                                    I know

                                    that this

                                    must show

                                                            that . . .

                                               

                        imagination's alive and well and living in Bermondsey, Wallingford, Chester and Nottingham

                                                            Omsk

                                                            Tomsk

                                                    and old Moscow.

 

 

                                                    (Out you go.)

 

The illustrator added a lovely sketch of two KGB-like figures in macintoshes swinging the skipping rope for a child who dances off among scattered rose-heads.

Penny McC.