JOURNAL OF THE DIAMOND*
We diamonds
we are not pearls
volatile, vinegar can annihilate them
I do not fear man's teeth nor the teeth
of vitriol
That evening m a little white house
the woman who wore me at her throat
her husband called her Alix the others Majesty
was nervous
as a pearl
took aromatic drops
flickered a lace handkerchief
touched the medals
and started
when her son a big pale boy had
the hiccups
The other were playing cards
Fancy what a diamond thinks of cards
They had received important letters
The ·friends of the nation meant to come
Everything was to be changed in the world
They would begin to walk the tightrope again
there would be hardly any rest
except for those in jewels and bodices
with images of the Virgin lying between each breast
• The imperial family had been executed at Ekaterinenburg under the force
of popular pressure, aroused at the news that the White Guards had seiezd
Tcheliabinsk and were threatening to carry away the Czar. That the
bodies of the condemned might not fall into the hands of Kolchak's men
and be used for relics and anti-Soviet agitation, the people decided to
destroy them and to throw everything that the vitriol had not annihilated
into the mines. When Kolchak became commander of the city, he had
all the houses searched and the countryside ransacked in his hunt for the
imperial remains. All that was found was a huge diamond, which had
been thrown in a nearby mine.
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