In your hands the balalaikas burn with nervous friction’s flame. Jesting tongues of poppy-reddened fleeting fools adjourn for second dawn-light’s gut and wire-strung triangular and splintered fretted frame. All notes run sharp but stave the coming gloom: the clouding air is low. You sing your shame to falling stones of heaven’s crumbling tomb, and balalaikas cry again to call their children home. The ragged choirs resound in song to praise the holy minor fall of Hallelujah. Angels curl around like ruined smoke in eyes which turn opaque, as men atone and children’s voices break.