WHITE SIEGE
“Stalingrad is no longer a city.
By day it is a huge cloud of blinding smoke.
And when the night comes, dogs dive into the Volga,
because the nights of Stalingrad terrorize them.»
(Diary of a Soviet soldier)
Stalingrad, December 12, 1942
A woman is wearing a black coat
and snow jewels on her cold breasts;
She has crumbled bones,
and two children to feed,
up there, on the seventh floor
of the building, ornated
with the 24-carat holes
of the machine guns,
slaughtered like the last
giant hog on Earth
—a mirage of flesh —
after so much hunger,
and long times of mud meatballs
and gas broth.
A German Panzer
is lying in the middle of the street,
looks like a mammoth
without teeth and fur,
that barely breathes,
inflating its veins and tracks.
It swallowed its Aryan driver
—cooked by molotov —
one week ago,
and is still digesting
his square jaws and iron medals.
An old man near a stack of boots
with a blanket on his head
and a bullet in his brain,
convinced he is dead,
is crawling on all fours,
—sniffing his nephew’s red t-shirt—
listening to the grenade’s jazz
and the barking of dogs—-
their tails in flames that illuminate
the shadows of the street,
macabre, elusive traces
of what once was.
Mamochka stewed our dog,
but Yeva was very thin,
so his meat was spare.
Our baby brother,
born after the troops came,
he is too weak to eat, doesn’t
cry, his diaper goes unused.
There are three of us to feed,
Mama has no choice.
Winter’s wedding ring,
a red bruise around her neck.
In the mirror a full bellied man’s refection
that moves like a mad monkey in his guts,
chasing him to the white building
on the paradox corner fragmented
by the blast of his blame, his wife’s remains
still screaming in his stomach.
White souls, white uniforms
white weapons, white pain
(the shock of each dawn)
eating snow, while Beauty
is trapped in a block of ice
with mouth open, arms still up
(shouting ‘please, just stop this!’)
and frozen hairs sticking out
from the roots of dreams,
white like a painting just started.
While they’re dying. ‘Why?’
(asked a little girl in front of a big pot)
A whine, out there. Then a thousand.
It’s the White Siege soundtrack.
Beyond the city,
Winter wears long hands,
miles of white on the horizon.
We’ve become stickmen in uniform,
sunken faced and hollow eyed;
hunger clawing at our guts
like a cat trapped in a bag.
We no longer feel the cold.
Kreuger falls, won’t get up, won’t talk.
He’s been sick for days,
frostbite has claimed his feet,
already he smells like a dead thing.
As we stand around him,
Bucholdst begins tapping his bowl
against his bayonet.
I won’t let us start on him
before his last breath.
Das Fuhrer would appove,
it is a matter of pride.