Shostakovich

Russian jazz flourished a time then vanished,

Memory of what could have been, that now

Too soon keeps beat to how the state allows

Tightrope sonatas, acclaimed or banished.

Fluttering phantoms of the silent screen

Pay the impoverished improvisor

With minutes of trills, hours the wiser:

Entrance hat-trick steam-train exit has-been.

Songs exiled in the middle of the night

Never to return, return on the keyboard –

Listen to them, paralysed once with fright.

Preludes a survivor has-been has

And slams against a wall (for the record)

Momentous threnodies, some Russian jazz.