The Crimean War, Part 1

O Sevastopol! Crimea’s bright jewel!
Where serf and sailor nation came apart!
Where Turk and befeathered Zouve met fire cruel!
Where triage came and lamp’s bright light brought heart!

Where are you now? In Little Russia’s grasp,
Giv’n ‘way by bureaucratic oversight.
Your graves filled with forgotten, still we clasp
Your dreams and fears to twice fooled hearts too tight.

To war we went, for all man’s deeds belong
To him, and we are men, and so we went,
For reasons placed upon a map and strong,
Pride, piety, patriotism all sent.

Both high churchmen and dissenters with them
Spoke words which linked earth’s kingdom to the sky,
While French-backed Rome and Third Jerusalem
Bound here already, protected each eye.

Red severance bought for purpose vague, obscure,
But all war drags its men about like this.
The passions, aggressions, at home felt pure,
But Balaklavan dirt ends with a kiss.

Flesh is flesh and tears and burns and furrows,
Like trenched men’s choleric water filled bed,
And harsh peninsular winter wind stows
In stacks and heaps and unmarked graves the dead.

Dead. A man from steppe or Manchester yard,
Story-less now, lost to time. Who is he?
A number now, twenty years old, all hard.
Less in Peter, where Tsar fears the angry.

What can we say of these poor vorloen hoop?
These souls with names and fears and father’s too?
Who on the fields of Inkermen did grope
For life amidst the fog and fatal stew?

We are these men! We fought their fight of hate.
Each story told is ours, and we hate them
And hate ourselves, against ourselves conflate
With French-backed Rome and Third Jerusalem.

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Here are some explanations which might help comprehension:

1. The Crimean peninsula is located in the Black Sea. In 1854-55 a conflict was centered here between Russia and the combined forces of Turkey, England and France. The cause of the conflict is complex and not relevant to the poem.

2. Sevestopol is the largest city on the peninsula and was the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet. The 354-day siege of the city was the main action of the war. Despite being mainly populated by ethnic Russians, it is currently a part of the Ukraine after Khruschev (himself Ukrainian) switched it to the Ukraine department in 1954, when Ukraine was part of the USSR.

3. The Zouves were a French regiment known for their bravery and fancy dress.

4. Florence Nightingale (known as "the lady of the lamp") became famous for her work during the Crimean War, although the main development in medicine was the "triage" system, developed by a Russian physician. It saved the lives of countless Russian soldiers (thought their casualties were still shockingly high).

5. "Little Russia" was a common 19th century name for the Ukraine.

6. The Slavophile nationalists saw the Russian people as the defenders of the true Orthodox faith, and Moscow as the "third Jerusalem" (the second being Constantinople) which was destined to be the center of true Christian religion.

7. Balaklava and Inkerman were both sites of major conflicts.

8. Vorloen hoop is dutch for "lost troops" although it was widely mis-translated as "forlorn hope."