Alexander Pushkin Dies in a Duel by Charles Rammelkamp

A. A. Naumov. Alexander Pushkin’s duel with Georges d’Anthès.
Public Domain

Alexander Pushkin Dies in a Duel

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How would you react

to an anonymous lampoon

awarding you the title,

Deputy Grand Master of the Order of Cuckolds?

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We were sure it was the work of Baron d’Anthès.

He’d been sniffing around Pushkin’s wife

in Saint Petersburg society,

but to my knowledge,

the beautiful Natalia’d rejected him.

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Married six years, four children,

Pushkin was as certain of her fidelity

as he was of d’Anthès’s mischief.

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Sure, tongues wagged as they always will

when a stunning beauty’s involved –

some called Natalia Russia’s Helen of Troy,

and no denying she was a flirt.

She had so many admirers.

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But the mock letter couldn’t be ignored,

and even though the Baron denied writing it –

and face it, it wasn’t exactly Eugene Onegin, –

the week after d’Anthès’s marriage

to Natalia’s sister Yekaterina,

the two of them met at Chernaya Rekha

on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg,

a cold day at the end of January.

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Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for Brick House Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A chapbook of poems, Jack Tar’s Lady Parts, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing. Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, was recently published by Future Cycle Press. An e-chapbook has also recently been published online Time Is on My Side (yes it is) –http://poetscoop.org/manuscrip/Time%20Is%20on%20My%20Side%20FREE.pdf

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