She is the special one who'll grow up in his care ,
if she would only stop that screaming, if she could only
be made to understand him , but this is the only way.
Working in lines like beaters at a grouse-shoot,
we go on searching, stony among ferns and bracken,
unable to spring her from his trap.
Carol Rumens
AT THE PISKARYOVSKOYE CEMETERY*
Lines of low, wooden tents with pinched, dark openings:
We thought of Achilles , the un-sandalled heel
White and frail as an onion ; charnel-houses.
We peeped for bones. But later someone said
They were just dachas for the wintering roses .
The dead, under their silver stars and sickles,
Lay deeper. How the grave-lined walk went on!
Death, the supreme totalitarian,
Seemed challenged by an equal, magnified,
Pumped full of windy light and soaring concrete:
Only the kitsch temples gathered the shades
Into their smaller, denser, human forms .
'This cemetery is a memorial to the Leningrad citizens who died during the Nazi
blockade, 1941 -42. Tanya Savicheva was a ten-year-old girl who kept a siege diary,
noting down the deaths of her family , one by one, until she was the only survivor.
The italicized line quotes her last words .
