Lenin, Still Standing

Every city I write about has an empty plinth where he used to stand. Tiraspol has the statue. Lenin in a granite coat that falls like poured concrete, high over the parade steps of the Supreme Soviet, supervising a square that still carries his era's proportions.

I stood at the base and looked up, doing the arithmetic of removal: toppled in Kyiv, melted in the Baltics, sold in Berlin, and here, polished. The statue is not a leftover. It is a statement of continuity, maintained on purpose, budgeted annually.

Novembers suit him, the brown light, the flags at rest. I took the photograph every visitor takes and one page of notes most do not. The plinths of this continent are my index; today I visited the exception that proves it.