Arctic Cities

For the Cossacks, Siberia was the future – either in pelts or timber –
as the Empire stepped East leaving tracks of bloody footprints
to the Vladivostok coast. Flung outpost of eaves and weatherboards,
dripping steadily from mid-April to unfathomable June,
here exile was largely character-building – with stoves, rye loaves,
foraging, the consolations of saxifrage and plug tobacco.
Summer, when it came, brief but extravagant, spiked the mind
like amphetamine. A child’s voice calling through pines.

Stalin started a clock. To achieve the impossible – such as landing
two men on the moon – set a timeframe. Five years, exactly,
for the electrification of the whole country. The pistol crack.
From Rostov and Leningrad, Kaluga, Tver, in open-topped trains
that rolled for days past abandoned villages, revved-up youth decamped.
Teenagers built power stations. As if magicked out of permafrost,
fantastical cities sprang up along the 69th parallel – Magadan,
Igarka, Norilsk – where the Palace of Sport and the Palace of Culture
...