Apologies for the gap in-between as I copied this and the rest of the poem was on another page. This poem should be a single stanza.
With that being stated, this poem works as a joke where there is a punchline at the end. However, we start at the time "Shorter Russian Poem" which could mean that the poem is about Russia or it could also mean that the poem is a shorter version of a Russian archetype of poem. My guess it's about the former rather than the later.
So we start with natural devastations like "famine, plague / floods, rains / droughts". The placement of "floods" next to "rain" and then "droughts" brings an interesting duality to this poem. I would think it'd be something like "drought, rains, floods" but this set-up kind of brings a positive trajectory: drought at least there's rain. But the disasters are separated and are added up rather than to be thought of as a trajectory. Devastation is Devastation.
Then we move to man made devastations like:
poverty, robberies
kidnappings
civil war
invasions
The span and scope of these items brought up fluctuate to personal and individual like "kidnappings" to huge devastations like "poverty" and "invasions" and I feel that the connective tissues for each one try not to connect like one leads to another, but a list of devastations combined with the natural ones.
"tyrannies upon tyrannies" This is when we get away from the differential of the list to one thing that builds upon itself "tyrannies" which show a generational negativity -- that's the connection it's generations of all the devastations which leads to
... and then
the dark times
came
This is the punchline -- it gets worse. Like this meme:
The dark times came. I think I'm wrong and it's the latter in why this poem is called "Shorter Russian Poem" shorter version of a Russian archetype of poem/literature and I haven't read enough Russian literature to name some writers other than Gogol, Checkov, Nabakov, and Dosteyevsky that reminds me of this type of idea.
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