"Street Song"

(Dedicated to those who died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944)

There they sang in the guttered smoke

For that faith found in tenuous will,

Under furored and fevered skies

That languished in solemn hearts still.

There they sang from sewer and ash

For land and love so shattered,

While the will of souls denied,

Under titan tanks that scattered.

Proudly we embrace the winds of freedom

Over the veil of death.

Sadly, we hail cattle car comrades

Who ride the trains of death.

The young boys, they call to their fathers,

The young women cry to the prayer,

Under death-smell fascist elders

Searching the pandemic lairs.

Ghostly homes in tunneled dark,

Myriad in the maze,

Housed the spiritual light

While above the streets ablaze.

Nature healed the consecrated ground.

Silent under the stars,

Soon the stones that marked those graves

Will be forgotten

Under the eye of Mars.

Proudly, we embrace the winds of freedom

Over the veil of death.

Sadly, we hail the cattle car comrades

Who ride the trains of death.

– Burt Baldwin, Bayfield