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At Terek River Here on this bank, this piece of Caucasus, olive green and braided Friends share cigarettes and cold tea Thinking of boyhood beers, recollections before training camp Bratwurst, brod and Saurkraut Of girls and Heine, poetry and football And of hiking in the fresh Elbe air. But now by this river, friendship becomes frozen in the mud. No more sharing of family stories and of talking of sons to be. No more talking of love and continuity. It is all finished, sudden in a Russian bullet. Finished in the taste of iron and the shock of frost. A Russian bullet made by rosy faced women With headscarves and pinnys in a factory. Women who will chat over a conveyor belt Of babies and lovers, and dresses and hair, While picking bullets like potatoes, Shiny in their golden cases; deadly gifts for unknown friends in another part of the world. Their blether and German friendship brought together In this moment in a ditch At the Terek River. A moment a thousand miles from home Where memories are being destroyed, Their spirit caught in a rising searchlight Looking for others in the sky Others looking the other way Missing the glimpse; That glance between would-be friends – But for this accident in time. Close by, in this moment at the Terek River, Blood and terror and friendship, disbelief and death; Time and place are mixed with water and smoke In this unknown land between today and tomorrow, Where the unseen sea is brighter than the sky, In this no-mans land where friendship struggles. |
Additional Notes:
I have a friend, Werner, who served with the German SS on the Eastern Front during the second World War. This poem concerns an experience he had when his friend was shot near the Terek River in the Caucasus.
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