by Eugene Datta
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Photograph by Jérôme Sessini / Magnum for The New Yorker, March 7, 2022 |
He was going away; he was leaving
Irpin—his suitcase still upright, waiting—
a trustful dog next to the master’s body:
the hand that held it, half-open, blood-
smeared, the right foot pointing away.
Who’s the one lying close by? A friend?
A brother? A co-escapee? Half-covered, half
on the sidewalk, across curbstones painted
yellow and white, plastic waste strewn
around. What’s on the mind of the soldier
kneeling on the monument? Head bowed
in grief, flag in hand, flowers in front of him,
two bodies behind—it’s much harder, he’s
learned the hard way, to do good than bad;
so many more ways for things to go wrong
than right. Three men with bags in hands
leaving now—lucky to be late, to be in time,
lucky to be leaving. A willow weeping
behind a shattered roof, a slate-gray sky
crisscrossed by overhead lines—
a farewell exhaled in haste covering the body,
the suitcase still upright, waiting—
Eugene Datta's writing has appeared in The New Verse News, Poetry Bay, the Richmond Review, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, West Coast Line (currently Line), and Poetry Salzburg. He lives and works in Aachen, Germany.