Across the steppes of Kursk, Kazakhstan, the army partisans
march to the shock-shelled howitzers
or dance to the lonesome craw of moon.
One man's jaw is bandaged shut--
what he tastes is cattle grass, gunpowder-black,
the rotten stench of the blessed but dead.
The bullet puncture in his head
is cavernous, not unlike the soft cat's-paw
it was some twenty years ago,
this one now sore and blistering
lets in the scattering ashes and tumult
of the plains. Where once a soul was issued in,
only the remnants of a driving rain intrude
and dampen his will to live. Gadflies pillage
what's left of his left cheek's flesh
and the slope of his back follows the turn
of an anti-aircraft gun that pummels at the sod.
Bent double like him, this army of somnambulists
plods on towards a river and its thirst,
while above in what's left of trees, a fist
of starlings tightens, lets go, and hastens skyward.