A hand reaching out
with no sign of peace...
This poem was positively fabulous to me. The wording, the meaning, everything about it just made me happy (Well, not the content, but you all probably understand what I mean). When I read it through, certain things stuck out to me, such as the line I used to open the poem.
1941 was full of downtrodden events with the Nazi ruling of Europe. With Leningrad being in Russia, it felt many of the events that spiraled from the hostile takeovers. In knowing the history, it makes the poem hit a little harder.
the dead could not be buried.
A line that hit specifically hard, knowing how many people had passed in this period of time due to the events, and that the solid frozen ground was keeping them from being lay to rest. It even in the end mentions the events, in mentioning the "siege."
Then of course the imagery hits hard through this as well;
They lay on the soil,
some of them wrapped in dark cloth
bound with rope like the tree's ball of rtoots
when it waits to be planted;
Could you see it? I could. And it hit nicely, right in the solar plexus, right in the feels, how this must have looked to everyone who was stuck in this town, looking at this scene, the bodies stiff as cocoons that will split down the center. Just imagining what it would be like, seeing a loved one in such a situation, as previously said, right in the solar plexus. Ouch.
Of course, of all of them, the that I opened with hit me the hardest. The images of this just... Made my cavernous black pit of a heart ache. So much potential, so many dreams left undreamed, and you can see them in the simple lines, a hand reaching out with no sign of peace.
I absolutely agree with you and your "cavernous black pit of a heart". The images fed to the reading in this poem are horrid. But what hit me even more than the images of the dead bodies laying cold on the ground, were the images of the living. The fact that they were using a child’s sled to crate off their loved ones is an awful and juxtaposing idea. Also it is not only the frozen ground that prevents the dead from being place to rest but the fact that the grave diggers are so malnourished. This poem describes a life where having a pulse was just as bad as not having one. Great response Krsy.
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