From moments when love was cherished in Stalingrad,
Like stories written on the walls
With the song repeated by Babushka
And not long after that, the war reached its gates.
Hands turned into fists and ready for battle
Like heads and shoulders patiently under the whip,
The Motherland Calls enchants and glorifies,
Without knowing the ensuing bloodbath.
Every minute felt like a bundle of fear,
With the magic of free will as faded as a dust,
Like a house turned into rubble
And corpses piled upon corpses.
the soldier. the pretty city girl.
in a room of rust and patterned blood
cover
ash all in the riven air
ash of city, ash of sacrifice, ash of
soul
"I came here a soldier. You have made a monster of me."
he told her, in a voice as
cancerously black and lost as
any stygian
pit
frightened and quiet
she spread supine, naked, shaped, shaded
like gold
mortar shells screaming all around
digging holes
Stalingrad 1942
City surrounded
Bloodied human zoo
Shattered buildings
Architecture ruin
Walls of peace
Blasted and strewn
In the rubble he crawls
Suited white
Background blend
Silent
For hours he lies
Corpse still
Eyes in focus
Await his kill
German Half-track
Up ahead
Scope fixed
On the commanders head
Range set
Wind adjust
Breathe in
Shots a must
Trigger squeezed
Echo of sound
Mosin-Nagant round
Enemy bound
In the blink of an eye
Pace of it
Bullet hits
The hear of it
Momentarily he stands
In a swaying state
Zaytsev,s shot
Seals his fate
As panic unfolds
As to where the shot came
This white uniformed assassin
In his theatre domain
This Ural peasant
Soviet Hero
In a battered Stalingrad
Where moral was zero
This silent killer
Who seen out this war
In Kiev city
A Red Soviet Star
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/war-2.php
It comes every once so often
Seeking the searing cry of pain
With the persistence of starving men
It finds the throne to reign
Pushing and pushing until I rhyme
Against my will I would do this
Its determination to them cry
Matches only the dying men
If you should come
from the pits of only Hell
Leave me be at the stoop
And on that step you will see
A man of deadened dreams
For the love of the first woman had
on the night of Stalingrad
The hopes of this city's capture soon
Whelms them with tenacity
They would fortell only cries and doom
on the siezure of this city
Citizens scream and run for shelter
They're wings were clipped
Because of this, they knew no better
upon the night of Stalingrad
They may search
and they may find
Their families and all their pieces
I wasn't there all those years ago
But the dreams pf the involvement make it seem so
I've envisioned another just like it
Only it wasn't s foreign
Upon our soil the blood will set
Just like it did in Stalingrad
Snow fell upon the marble eyes of the dead,
And the magpies pecked the buttons on the coats,
Drawn by the gleam of dulling brass attract,
As the ravens sought the softness of the throats.
Trees in naked staggers scratched the skies,
And the guns in the distance snapped like cracking ice,
In the pools of oil, flames guttered slowly out,
On the scalps of corpses froze the cooling lice.
In the minds of the generals thoughts akin to grief
Wept not for the loss of life but loss of war,
And men growing hypothermic in retreat,
Felt the stilling of their blood forever more.
How to withstand the burning reap of cold
When it bites with frost the toes ‘till black and gone,
How to withstand the march of retreat in winter
When winter marches on and on and on.