A Vilnius Autumn

There are dried dark blood stains
upon the concrete steps at Taurakalnis park.
An extra, dressed as a member of the Prussian infantry,
and wearing a tunic from a Prague costume house,
had a seizure here yesterday afternoon
and went down like a grouse on the Glorious Twelth.
Maybe he had time to take in the panorama as he fell?
Gedimino Castle. The Hill Of Three Crosses.
The snaking banks of the River Neris down below.
The old red rooftops and the many church spires.
Somewhere in the region of 40 church spires.
None too bad for a city which didn't officially
embrace Christianity until the mid 14th century.
A steady parade of sightseers drift overhead in
baskets propelled by the Archimedes principle.
Heading west towards the setting sun.
Heading west towards Poland.
Floating over fields where the occupants
of the ghettos were marched like diseased cattle
and “liquidated” by the guns of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen.
Floating past the the hypodermic spike of the TV tower,
where the tanks of the occupying Soviet forces
rolled over the bones of 14 unarmed protestors,
cracking skulls, splintering bones, spilling civilian blood.
All of which brings me back to the dried sark stains
upon the concrete steps at Taurakalnis park.
22,000 were killed or wounded
at the real-life Battle Of Waterloo in 1815.
So one minor head-wound’s probably about par for the course.


'Battle Of Brian' Beechams commercial