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