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DEATH’S HEAD

 

At least I was lucky.  I managed

to mourn you, mother.

In spite of the corpses frozen

on the lower bunks of the Gulag trains.

 

I stood at your feet crying,

your frail death’s head

shrunken, historical,

stone or wax to my kiss.

From these bones I came.

And I felt so guilty towards you.

 

Not everyone is so lucky

with tears to exorcise guilt,

to have the dust signal in silence

that he is forgiven, he must go.

 

How many were deprived by those trains

under the soap clouds of corpse-smoke

hung round the earth as it veered

into this century?

 

With all those bodies heaped like a ghastly mistake

how many millions in the undone cities

were able to put their lips

to an identified head?

  

Alan Marshfield

  

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