The childrens crusade

[jack_babalon]

Like Luther's army
And Abel's brother
I woke to find
Only to smother
An angel fat
At Satan's feast
Where falsehood, childhood
And loneliness ceased
Asleep in
The stumble of autumn
The pain was calvary
Our living on
Empty!
The dead of it -
The dread of it!
~Luther's army
Death In June

I found this doing a random image search across the net. This one comes off of an untranslated Russian LJ. The image immediately seized me with a kind of beautiful dread: This river frozen with children who stare out at us with tiny insect faced gas masks, a bouquet of berets, white collars that rest on dark shoulders like the wings of angels that have been clipped too soon. The black flags flacid under the windless clouds, the skyless gray. The rolled up sleeves displaying the bravado of the older boys. The demonic pied piper figure of the officer who stand ominously behind the drummer boy (trapped by the photo in a perpetual pantomime of a silent cadence.) The two children in the left hand corner manning a machine gun like a toy. The man in the right hand corner holding up a book with what appears to be a prosthetic hand (for some reason I imagine that the book is the bible and he is a priest).

I can picture these poor children being plucked out of their schools, playgrounds, homes and daydreams by the trumpets of some forgotten power. A harvest gathered too soon. A tide of ghosts marching from and back into the shadows of history.

Comments

[karis-straif.livejournal.com]

I have a Russian gas mask just like that!
They are so creepy!

[vomikronnoxis.livejournal.com]

Oh my! New desktop background.

Powerful image.

~rl

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

almost as arresting as the gas-masked faces
are the naked faces scattered randomly throughout.

[ninsun.livejournal.com]

you find the neatest things.

[gaeasdaughter.livejournal.com]

Come out and play

In the cold place of your father's folly

He needs your blood

Young and warm

Your eyes hidden

Wild and frightened

To salt the tears he cries in his beer

On a crusty winter night