Poetry by Asura
Russia's Kursk XIII
A stranded vessel
Under pressure, anechoic
Silent and deadly yet
Stranded. Almost in the
Arctic Circle, Barents floes
Thickening the water.
Plots thicken, will they ask for
Help? Who to choose, us or
them?
1943, the S-salient bulging.
A tide to turn, armies to
Beat. The cries of coastal
St. Petersburg still cooking up
A terrible stench. Rodemtsiev's
Guards, a walking wall.
T34, the model-T trucks
American bootprints on the
steppe. Ultra forlorn, on
Barbarossa's eve, the
Silent Stalin Motherland, curling
with the vehemence of
Zhukov's pincers.
Contour after contour of ringed
Entrenchment. Defence in depth
Protecting Kursk.
Third time luck we hope
In Britain. Save the men
And raise the Oskar. Take
It deep inside Russia's bosom.
And send the boys back
Home to Kursk.
Manifold thermoclines, shooting
Submarine currents in the
Depth of an August night.
The simplest of Morse messages
Dit Dit Dit, you know the rest.
CQ? Is there anybody out
There? The Atlantic Treaty,
Seeming high rhetoric,
Forged on two battleships in '41
Holds true still, especially for mariners. The laws of
The sea are for protection
From fear and want. Betrayals on
both sides, Yalta, Potsdam.
Churchill's scribbled percentages
For Asia minor. Death of a
Statesman in April '45 and
A cold curtain descends to the
Crescendo of a mushroom
Cloud.
A world of systemic paranoia,
A city of internal walls.
A world turned inside out
Two generations living in the
Fear of pink, radioactive
Clouds.
Twin reactors, fading slowly.
Their half-lives leaching
A slow poison into a
Crueler ocean. The men in
Half light, faint echoes on
The hull. Help from Britain, moving
Too slowly, asked for too late.
Remnants of a cold, cold war
Sealing Sailors' fate.
