So many owner-less animals,
They forage among broken bricks.
Were they soldiers’ pets at the base?
Are those troops still fighting or laid
Up in a hospital where doctors fix
Bones or are they already decayed?
              Poland is tempting to some.
“I am old, unwilling, to flee westward.
Let the children find new lives. It is my
Winter, let a missile strike me, okay,
Let me take a Russian to hell with me.”

Windows boarded up, wind whips through
Anyway. A worn coat zipped to my neck.
Under a torn sleeve a purple bruise swells.
“Sometimes you have to become a check,
On evil proliferating, swamping valleys
Where rivers used to flow below snow
Dropping from distant heaven. God!
                  Are you with us or them?
Since they kill like a devil—cruel, inflicting
Maximum pain—I know we are persecuted
Just like the divine, just like any innocent.
Let me die as one shepherd to pets
Crying for their masters—disappeared
By Russky troops bleeding us to death.”