True peasant-dark, that Siberian claw—
drawn out of birch and ice into their law,
gone soft with silk but animal, the skin,
to Petersburg, his hunger dressed as peace.
Soon the empress sends her women after him;
dawn to dark, where blood finds no release—
upon her boy, he breathes his mudded word
construed as covenant—the bleeding stilled.
Again he feeds; again she calls him Lord,
kneeling as the boyars measure out his will—
before the feast must turn to discipline,
remanded to the ice-locked room,
shriving every rank and matted sin—
unmoored into the gloaming, out of view.