Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941 by Sharon Olds

stone graves among green trees

That winter, the dead could not be buried.The ground was frozen, the gravediggers weak from hunger,The coffin wood was used for fuel. So they were covered with somethingAnd taken on a child’s sled to the cemeteryIn the sub-zero air. They lay on the soil,Some of them wrapped in dark clothBound with rope like the tree’s …

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