Baltic Sea 1944 Poem by Liilia Talts Morrison

Cold of night is slowly sinking
Cruel tons of steel upending
Sounds of agony soon blending
Liquid graves yawn muted endings.

Angry blood red Baltic Sea
Throbbing glowers as in spurts
Black waves swallow shrapnel fire
Witness sunset’s funeral pyres.

Fish now scatter in the ebbing
Flesh exposed and metal shredding
Giant warships’ silent convoy
Broken by a small child’s whining.

War is hell and here it is
Bodies bound by fear unending
Armageddon’s rulers sending
Fireworks and sunset galas
Wed in deathly panoramas.

Some survive to tell the tale
As they swim with will unbending
To the breast of earth now scorching
All the while a wife’s life ebbing
Much too damaged to be mending.

In the distance sounds of pealing
Sylphs and mermaids chanting healings
To the souls no longer fettered
Nevermore to pray while kneeling
As Promethean flames are sealing
Unearned fate of unsung mortals.

Cold of night has now descended
Cruel tons of steel upending
Sounds of agony have blended
Liquid graves embracing endings.