For the Grain Elevator

I think about your marvelous stature, your towering windows, how they overlook the southern railway station and the canning factory. How, from your heights, one can overlook the southern neighborhoods past the Yelshanka river.

And how from your windows, men crowd, intently watching the horizon. From your heights, the barrels of many machine guns simultaneously spew hot lead angrily across the steppe, as voices in a choir, their bullets scattering the many who ardently gaze in admiration, looking up in awe, death shining down as rays from the sun which fall from heaven between the crevices of the clouds. The men cower in the face of your divine posture, fearing the heavy blows which it rains from above. 

And how those within, behind your ironclad walls, protected by your muscular embrace, must survive the pestilent envy of those below. Those who, naked and exposed in the harsh cold of the steppe, wish to be held by your gentle hands, wish to be taken in by your benevolence, and gaze longingly into the windows, wishing it were they who occupied your floors, and that it was their gun barrel which sat on your windowsills.

And how you are peppered with scars, your many scars, which you wear without tears, without grimace, wrought upon you from below. Despite these scars, you stand silently above the steppe, protecting the many within who fight ardently to keep their place within your walls, within your heights. The cannons below scream in futile anger, your walls absorbing the blows of impotent shells without regard. And know that these blemishes, though harshly imposed upon you in ignorance, only come from a place of longing, aimed solely at those within, who greedily hold their position within you with hands of steel, rather facing death than to ever leave your embrace.

And how, to be within your walls, that glorious sacred ground, so many rush blindly towards your holy monolith, towards you with magnetic attraction. Scurrying across the steppe like lemmings, from cover to cover, they jump over fallen comrades until they can enter your sacred doors, a hallowed portal into your embrace. And with haste, without second thought, into the stairwell they rush, braving a precipitation of spite, bullets, and grenades from the floors above.

And how so many men are sacrificed in your name, their corpses piling in your shadow. Your marvelous nature necessitates sacrifice, a thousand men, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds. The dead quickly pile in the fields, pile in the windows, and in the stairwell. Far away villages drain of men in your name, their simple inhabitants ignorant of your splendor. In your worship, the field marshal, with a stiff expression, yet immense haste, throws his men into the pyre, at a rate accelerating each day, their souls offered as prayers at your altar.

And now, I think to myself, do you care?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/German_pows_stalingrad_1943.jpg
3 Volgograd Elevator Image: PICRYL - Public Domain Media Search Engine  Public Domain Search}

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