EDUARD SCHMIDT-ZORNER

EDUARD SCHMIDT-ZORNER

Leningrad Symphony

(On August 9th, 1942, Karl Eliasberg gave a premiere performance of Dmitry Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony in besieged Leningrad)

Tree bark boiled to soup.

Book glue eaten.

Ice winter, frost beaten.

A face stands out

like a death mask under the shroud.

The Germans starved Leningrad out.

Rats, pets, and birds were eaten.

River Neva and Lake Ladoga froze over.

Do you hear the children cry,

do you see them die?

Bodies are pulled on their sledges to the morgue.

Others lay there because they were dropped.

Funerals, graves, coffins were long forgotten.

A flood of death that could not be managed.

Families, streets and neighbourhoods vanished.

An encircled town, encirclement impenetrable.

Struggling only to survive, to defeat fascism.

In the radio like a heart beats a metronome.

Shostakovich finishes his 7th Symphony.

People die at the rate of six thousand per day.

Defying the enemy through music,

the weapon of notes, of composition.

Shostakovich's handwritten instruction:

"Dedicated to heroic people of Leningrad.

All instruments must play their parts!"

Karl Eliasberg appointed conductor.

He created an orchestra of survivors,

to perform despite starvation and dystrophy,

woodwind and brass

in a city short of breath.

Eliasberg procured a list of musicians,

25 were already blacked out, dead.

Those known to be alive

were circled in red.

The drummer collapsed on the way to rehearsal

the leading violinist died from starvation.

The rest unable to hold their instruments

longer than ten minutes.

Hollow-cheeked Eliasberg

conducting his orchestra sitting on a chair

Bolshoi Philharmonic Hall under the icy canopy,

civilians and defenders of the besieged city

were able to hear the powerful music.

In the city there was silence ---

A great joy, a feeling of hope...

everywhere the concert could be heard.

Even by the enemy...

Strength lies in the prophecy

to conquer the clenched evil.

They never gave up.

The concert helped lift the spirits

when they were struggling to survive.

Eliasberg was presented with flowers,

from where did they come

in a town without a blade of grass?

Healing

I grew up amidst ruins,

remember a dead cat, exposed

on the debris pouring out of a

lonely porch of a destroyed house.

Destruction everywhere, also in my heart

I had no toys, no space to play,

refugees we were, displaced people.

In a box, I found two tiny wooden blocks,

unfinished.

And I found a thimble.

And a wooden mushroom,

which my mother used to darn the socks.

I placed the blocks on top of one another,

and added the thimble as turret,

gave the mushroom next to it

the order to stand straight

to serve as umbrella to keep me safe

in the house, which I constructed.

Past

Every day flows, passing events.

We watch TV: a report on Omaha beach,

D-Day, hurricanes,

The daily news, each

a spoon cut in the daily mash.

We are moved

when media show the tragedy, fearfulness,

frightened by events that proved

our helplessness.

What remains is fear, which vaguely,

slowly, surely takes our breath.

You’ll drink the soup in grey monotony

of consecutive days towards a certain death.

You never will be free of doubt, uncertainties.

Earth knows no downtime,

She flees from our usual habits and deficiencies,

moves on with the wind,

drifts clouds over the endless fields,

writes verses with her breath.

I walk unfamiliar streets,

encouraged by remaining hope.

EDUARD SCHMIDT-ZORNER

EDUARD SCHMIDT-ZORNER is a translator and writer of poetry, haibun, haiku and short stories. He writes in four languages: English, French, Spanish and German and holds workshops on Japanese and Chinese style poetry and prose. Member of four writer groups in Ireland and lives in County Kerry, Ireland, for more than 25 years and is a proud Irish citizen, born in Germany. Published in 94 anthologies, literary journals and broadsheets in USA, UK, Ireland, Japan, Sweden, Italy, Bangladesh, India, France, Mauritius, Nigeria and Canada.