A snow-bound road, high above the world of winnowers,
fleshers, balers, cabbages and corn.
Here the panzers trampled every hayrake down
and mangled spokes of every horse-drawn
lorry for the dead. For as far as you can see,
the bodies stretch in twos and threes
across these uninhabited plateaus.
A man on crutches comes to claim his son
as clouds roll in, dark as the dirge
of crows which feed on frozen mulberries
below in a rutted gulch.
One mother courage spreads her arms
as if to embrace all hundred thousand
lying there, with a single syllable or breath.
Another bends to a puddle, prods a mirrored corpse
still quivering, shining the last whites
of his eyes up to the parting gates of heaven.
From beyond the hills and villages, from the Caucasus
and the Caspian Sea, a journalist appears
on foot quite accidentally, like you and me,
and makes of this world a camera obscura.

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