AUGUST 1942 ☀︎
Ever-guiding sun, brother —
we go ever vorwärts.
We go east.
Sun.
Light.
Your touch nearly chars our thirsty lips,
chapped mouths raising the Feldflasche
again and again.
We rejoice when a well is fresh —
water sheening in the cool depths,
echoing our languid eyes.
Around the Feldküchen
we laugh about the photograph
of Heydrich’s fiancée —
looking the part of a Montmartre girl.
Smiling, hand-tinted cheeks,
her gloved arm lifting her breasts,
the other hand drawing her girdle downward —
milk-soft.
“Well then, Luchs,
you have a little beauty.”
The cruel thing about Alois:
always prying, always vying
for echoes.
Still, the sun stretches
long sienna bands of light.
Motes of jasper sunflares.
The hummocks of steppe grass
undulate beneath the sky.
Is this forever?
Meadowland —
you are eternal.
Kameraden.
Tawny, spun-sugar hair.
Cobalt, damp-fern eyes.
The steady lines of men
moving in Kolonne.
Curls of copper rust.
A wry face on the left.
Spectacles — freckle-struck.
Carrying the weight
of a laden Tornister.
Our leather boots drum the earth,
imprinting trails of hobnailed soles
across the winding kilometers —
around the gully,
around the sky.
A Cossack cottage.
Wood rough-hewn and sun-stained,
encircled by a jaunty paling
and a melon patch.
Whorls of vine,
plump orbs of mellow citron.
The wiry, steel-haired Cossack —
a grin, a plate in hand:
curled bread kissed with salt.
We have made Lager.
Rivulets of sweetness
cool upon the tongue —
candied with sun.
Melon slices
adorn our laughing faces.
As we lay in the sunflower-lined bower.
The ides of summer.
Halcyon days these are.
Above an azure layer of sky,
wispy clouds and rouge-colored blooms
nip our boot heels.
Zeltbahn at day’s end,
horses’ hooves at dawn.
The jingle of the harness
trampling the curling verge
of the wayside grass.
Then —
a billowing wind.
Grit in our gleaming teeth.
Goggles with sepia-clouded lenses
on the ruddy face of a Feldgendarme.
Hands raising painted road markers,
directing a circus of lorries, guns,
and ponies alike
toward the Brückenkopf.
Kalatsch.
The Don.
The swath of cerulean.
Scintillating motes of azure.
Father Don.
Warden of worlds.
Nestled upon your bough,
this hamlet.
Bustling — the swaying of the pontoon bridge,
the lively clatter of war horses,
a Kübelwagen,
a whirling mass of rose-cheeked youths
on bicycles.
Leopold haunts the bank
amongst the sweeping reeds,
the calm eddies of the bend.
River lapping.
Musk-scented, tangy crushed notes
of verdant leaf.
Leopold’s eyes flash upward
to the suspended facets of broad light.
Sun spectral-arrayed,
like a kino-set.
Haughty and bold.
Heat rising off the straight horizon
of endless plain.
The warm mouth of Hera,
her oven ablaze.
Flits of vigor.
Bronzing our collarbones,
shoulder caps, and pert noses.
Boys, men, fathers,
and the fatherless.
All Kameraden.
VORWÄRTS!
To the riverbank.
Clasping steel helmets,
suspenders and gaiters and boots,
into the comfort
of the chilled depths.
The eddies pooling around our ankles.
Upon the pontoon bridge
a stout voice laughs:
“Enjoy the bath —
the Russians are famed for their banyas.
The city will be full of them!”
Rolling crests of laughter.
Soaked to our bones,
the murky olive of the Don,
slow and lolling.
We clamber to the dappled shade.
Bronze, lean yellow stalk,
silver fronds of grass.
Here we take pause.
Feldküchen — jolly froths of steam.
Pea soup with helpings
of creamy potato
and sweet crests of onion.
All around,
the melodic trill
of unbuckled Kochgeschirr.
Oh, to seek these hours
spent upon the bosom of Demeter.
The heady prowess of Boreas.
A sparkle.
Heat lightning!
Prances above our feasting hands.
Low and arching.
A ravishment.
