WITNESS THIS ARMY
During the interval, after act three
of Glinka’s opera, ‘Ivan Susannin’ –
pre-revolution, ‘A Life for the Tzar’ –
Stalin would leave his box at the Bolshoi.
In the fourth act, Ivan, the peasant, lures
the Polish Army out of Smolensk
and into a profound, winter forest.
They are lost. In the last act, they kill him.
Deep in the Katyn woods near Smolensk, pines
darkened the clearing where thousands, thousands
of Polish officers turned to earth.
So many crimes unpunished, dead unnamed.
‘O, Polnische Kamerad, wo sind
der Juden?’ ‘Majdanek, Chelmno, Oswiecim.’
An epoch has the tyrants it preserves,
even for an eggshell.
Note: The poem was first published on the site in January 2010
Alan Horne
December 2, 2016I like the little bits of German in the poems this month, a helpful corrective to our current isolationism. I’d always found the multilingual bits of, say, Eliot, or Pound, a bit irritating, as if they were showing off. You make me wonder if I just didn’t get the contemporary references.
David Selzer
December 4, 2016That great leveller the internet makes ‘bits of German’ etc. accessible to all – and, in the case of quotations the source as well as the sense.
John Huddart
December 6, 2016The idea that Stalin stepped from his theatre box into the Katyn woods with his revolver [or maybe Tokarev Automatic – you are right about the internet!] is perfectly chilling and appropriate.