To die as an exception

in a niche in time,

in a sudden fairytale cathedral on the plain,

mythically emerging in the moment

three hundred kilometers south of Moscow

only soon to dissolve like a mirage,

now considered barely to have existed,

retouched from a day in June 2023

like Lev Trotsky from Stalin's photographs,

huffed and puffed off the surface of reality

by Kremlin's Big Bad Wolf

Yes, to die in exclusion,

in a circumstance

hastily denied

Rarely

has the death of thirteen soldiers

become more overlooked

on the orders of superiors' superiors

(as something to be ashamed of,

like an involuntary burp

making one blush, embarrassed,

in the train compartment

or in the foreplay of sexual intercourse)

than the demise of these Russians soldiers

in their helicopters and military vehicles,

in the way of the motorway orchestration of June 24th,

as the Overture to Richard Wagner's Rienzi

thundered up

in Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin's

tank formation score,

exploding

into an unexpectedly unfriendly friendly fire,

immediately deemed insignificant;

the sudden death of the thirteen unassuming soldiers

causally invalidated by the Head of State

in the face of spouses, parents, children, and friends,

penetrating the vast, suddenly welling sorrow

in the hearts of the infinitely few