Karelia

By | 1 September 2013

Every day two villages disappear
[insert blank space here]
Phwaaa. It’s summer but here are

snow drifts in attic corners,
great banks resting where the church
{insert blank space here}

has turned into splinters of silver
wood and holey ghosts.
Every day two villagers disappear

[insert two blank spaces here] so
pray against arsonists and careless
cigarettes. The village (blank space)

is declared neperspektivnie — to be
liquidized for lack of proper prospect.
The fields are given to the crows.

Every day two more crows appear
[insert black spaces here and here]
to wander through houses like

the winter wind, that mills history
to a rough grey grit. The village shop stocks
[insert blank space here]

and vodka, and soon these bottles
disappear into empty stomachs
and move on. Two bull-dozers appear.

[Insert blank space
here and here
and here]

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