The school-parties pressed in silent queues.
We stared and stared at a little fist of bread
- The daily ration for 900 days-
Next, a diary . Were there secrets, still,
in
the shocked outpost that had been a city?
There was no light, no fuel and barely food;
The prosperous Savichevs were dying out.
But Tanya, keeping faith with civilisation,
Had dipped her listless , careful pen for each.
As famine cancelled , she redeemed, preserving
Loss on loss, till the last echoless name.
Everyone's died. Only Tanya's left.
We turned away, as her rescuers had turned,
Finding her too long-starved to be revived;
Left the neocropolis for the open park,
Wanting that deeper reticence of snow
- The Baltic winter's light memorial.
In moments, we were floundering, soaked and laughing,
High-kicking like joke-soldiers through the drifts
To storm the silver woods, our boots foaming.
We came to a pool, clear, quivering, iceless,
Where girlish trees, embarrassed, seemed to step
Gracefully back, not liking to admit
How passionately they'd dwelt on their reflections .
We snapped the immaculate cliche: Russian birches.
Were the city's chains melting as we listened?
Ice crept and slid, but the lost weight of the starving
Blew from the camps like dust : who'd count its grains?
Music kept drifting towards us, vague, heroic.
Spring called the flesh-soft buds to dance and blaze .
