Kursk

At a railway junction great powers meet
To blacken the earth with a generation
Of young musicians, mechanics, physicians
Electricians, farmers, painters, and poets

And a philosopher who loves to fish
Ground into blood and screams and scraps of flesh
By the future which some have seen, which works 1
For the dress-uniform closed loop of power

Beneath the Russian sky good young men die
And the tyrants who send them lie and deny




1 Lincoln Steffens