Letter from Leningrad

Poem by Roger Iredale

Liebschen, forgive me one last letter out of lands
bereft of God. Such frost, such cold,
I hardly write through hollow blackened fingers

here between the blizzards and those guns, eternal
casual guns we live to hate. Eyes iced
with bitterness that twists and locks each bone

until spines corkscrew, livers freeze, bladders
harden, we stare between the dawn
and ice floes on the Gulf of Finland where beyond

wildest fantasy are enemies. Or so they tell us:
enemies we are slowly with established
certainty destroying in their homes beside

their waterways. Our gunners vainly look for gold:
spire, dome, church – some glimmer
of a place we hardly any more believe exists.

Liebschen, we are starving for a dream in which
the dreamer has forgotten us. Tomorrow
we dynamite this palace and its glacial cascades

and part forever. The dead will not forget us,
Nor the living mourn us. We shall
leave bootprints darkening behind us in the forest snow.

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