Spring of a Down - 19
Полнолуние
Full moon scours down upon the midnight.[1] This any could see. Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.[2]
But anything else, for a Russian, requires higher approval: rapes did not happen. Summary executions? Just ask them if they were summaries.[3]
Or look at the moon over the graves. Dead souls in odyssey in inferno.[4]
Earlier this afternoon the babushkas mourned the failure. They wailed over the purple flashes over the coffins. Weeping. Weeping. Weeping.
A tip where rotting waste. There was heavy smoke from the thurible, a metal censer suspended on chains. Ora cen porta l'un de' duri margini; e 'l fummo del ruscel di sopra aduggia, sì che dal foco salva l'acqua e li argini.[5]
Then the congregation slipped to St. Cyril’s church, numbed by malignant glow, and took communion until they vomited.[6] The ashen pillars mixed with the sooty air created an aura with which was tormented respite. Kneeling before the priest atoning for their sins, particularly for the ones committed to perish and appointed. Life is so strange, when it binds missing persons to a destination unknown.[7]
And then the sun went down below both the dacha and the hovel. The women saw the Cossacks. The women were afraid. When they had fear, they were hungry, even for a little bread. They clasped and cuddled near their sons or husband. They asked but the husband lookout at the stormtrooper and their tanks and shook their heads.
The women cried: “I do not want to loot the corpses in my lust for plunder.[8] You can see the bakery with bread that is free. Take a little for me.”
The men shook their heads and pointed to the bayonets a thousand.
The women cried out: “My flesh and blood seek nourishment. Give me life or I will go up in flames.”[9]
But the men shook their heads. They pointed to the blood-red holes into which the slain had been pushed.[10] At the priests who were loyal to St. Cyril’s Russian Church.
But still, the women wailed. And then men’s hearts had been softened. One man and then another calculated the step which would bring home wafers to the one that they once loved, if only in a memory.
They heard the hissing petrol from several tanks gushing to feed the awful smoke.[11] They became black and rust-cover rotting garbage.[12] They saw that it was cold and clear. These factors weigh one against the other. A chance. The husbands ran.
They took a chance and became part of the little holocaust, reenacted. A sorrow for their deaths came too late.
The women continue to pray. “Oh, my Lord, I will not ask him to go out for food this time. Not even by the light of the full moon.”
In days they are buried with flowers on the graves. The night comes and the full moon scours down upon the midnight unquieted.
[1] Title.
[2] John 1:1 in Greek.
[3] Ebb, "Willkommen" from Cabaret.
[4] Gogol's famous novel.
[5] Dante, Inferno. XV 1 – 3.
Wordsworth translation:
“Now bears us onward one of the hard margins,
And so the brooklet's mist o'ershadows it,
From fire it saves the water and the dikes.”
[6] Allusion to Shevchenko, “Testament”
[7] Missing Persons, “Destination Unknown”
[8] Allusion to Shevchenko, “Testament”
[9] Allusion to Shevchenko, “Testament”
[10] Allusion to Shevchenko, “Testament”
[11] Allusion to Shevchenko, “Testament”
[12] Allusion to Shevchenko, “Testament”