Smorgan At The Don Poem by Frank Bana

Without a note of music
Or ancient ballad to recite
All throats too dry to sing
Dried of sound and spit by fear
Of lice, disease, the ring of weaponry

Without the prospect of discharge
From terror of unspeakable dark nights
Or a moment of release
From service to the deathly iron head
The logic of extinction, sacrifice

Without a golden finger for my hair
Ears shattered by tin hymns of motherhood
The comfort homilies of rabid men
Who die upon the front lines up ahead
Or cut down the deserters from behind

In every hour that passed for sleep
I saw the Volga burn, the city turned
To barren stars. His men descend
To caves, armed with what's left
Of teeth and fingers, gouging holes
Crouched inside protective smoke.
Then suddenly the earth awoke and shook.

I thought of my young distant cousin G.,
Whose fathers paid to sail the ship
Resting in his island air force base
On sheets, plied with one egg a week
The comfort of his crew, only
A one-in-three death rate

And of our enemy, Nazi in times of war
Christian between, like us, before we came
New men of sense, of international clay
Boyish at heart, whose heart itself is led
To place its thin white body on the fence

At night between the volleys, mortar rounds
Horizon flares, we write on scraps and bark
To those whose home devotions
We cannot quite embrace
Nor yet withstand, tracing despair
With what remains of one good hand

Without a book of poems, however slim
Approved or banned, the dawn approaches
With no sign or prayer
I write as if this action were the last
To be survived, clearly aware
An unsound verse could silence me
Or keep my voice alive.