Archive for 2023

1987-06-26 #2

Monday, April 17th, 2023

How could any system that could
produce or allow such talent
to flower be wrong?

We dance to the tune
of thoughtless consumption
on the stage of Capitalism
while they dance, poorer perhaps,
on a stage that
cherishes the future.

gallagher
Moscow, USSR
26 Jun 1987 #2

1987-06-21 – Leningrad

Wednesday, April 26th, 2023

The Leningrad siege, 1941 to 1944, 900 days.

How green grows the grass and how softly wave the trees.
here, under these gray Leningrad skies.

The winter and summer sun, smiling,
the seasons turned,
and all the agony man can give himself
came to pass here.

The breeze tugs at me,
dim faces … and memories of families gone.

The grass grows so green
and people walk here through the memories of death.

They bring a child and they touch his soft cheek,
and they hold his small hand and they cherish his eyes.

Here, against these stones and these mass graves,
how could it be?

Wind, death, sun and child all here.
Mankind is surely asleep.

gallagher
21 Jun 87
“At the burial ground
of the victims of the siege”

1987-06-21 #2 – Leningrad

Thursday, April 27th, 2023

I saw a girl’s diary, in Russian, with the dates
that her mother died, her father, her sister….

I saw how much bread 125 grams is (2x2x6″)
they lived on that during much of the siege.

gallagher
21 Jun 87 #2
Leningrad