by Neal Whitman
Pacific Grove, CA, USA
In a poem the Soviets pre-dated 1916
Akhmatova wrote no one would want
to listen to songs now that
the bitter days foretold had arrived.
Fifty years later in 1966 Frank Sinatra quipped
that the world would be a dreary place
without a song. He mused that
it gives you something to think about.
Actually, the Russian poet penned her poem
in 1917 after the Bolshevik revolution.
That gives you something to think about, yes?