Alexander Pushkin

Today, for some strange reason, perhaps it was browsing in banana box poetry book bargains, who knows how these things work, I thought of Alexander Pushkin. It was a Russian ship. A cruise liner sailing out of Canada. And because I'd come across a drunken sailor and assisted him back to his vessel I was invited aboard and thanked with vodka. I remember only that the vodka was brown, the colour of whisky. This is the real stuff, someone assured me.

And so to the poet of the same name as the ship. What other poet has an ocean going cruise liner named after him, I wonder. Perhaps there is a case for naming the next Cunard liner after William Shakespeare or Samuel Beckett or Byron or D H Lawrence but I doubt it will ever happen. The Brits, as ever, can't seem to see beyond the royal family. I'll wager the next Cunard will be named Prince George. Any takers?  To reign or to rain, that is the question. Now shuffle those cards.

Epigraph to The Queen of Spades

In rainy weather
they gathered together
to play.

To double - redouble -
a stake was no trouble,
they say.

They did not find it hard
to entrust to a card
their pay,

So no day of rain
ever slipped by in vain,
 they say.

-----
Alexander Pushkin
1799-1837